A Different Doctor, A Different Exile: Book 1 - Wrong Time and Rockets
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: In a different universe, the Doctor's trial went differently. Now the Doctor has to cope with a new body, even a new gender. As if that isn't bad enough, she has to deal with the questions from rocket scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass, someone known to her. But an old enemy is about to make an appearance...
1. Chapter 1 Two Crash-landings

Not long ago I started three new stories with a single foreword with an all-general disclaimer, but it doesn't work for me. Oh well.

As for disclaimers - I don't own Doctor Who or Quatermass.

Anyway, I've always wanted to write a Doctor Who story where the Doctor regenerated into a completely different incarnation at the end of the trial seen in 'The War Games,' the first story which showed Gallifrey and the Time Lords. There are two amazing 'Unbound' audio stories where the Doctor's life diverged, either because he managed to escape, or because he was regenerated into a different incarnation beyond that played by the great Jon Pertwee, but I wanted to do one myself.

What if the Doctor was forced to choose a new appearance when the Time Lords lost patience with him? What if they sent the new Doctor to a different time in the 20th century? What if the Doctor was female? What if she met and worked with Professor Bernard Quatermass?

I picture the new Doctor to be portrayed by Emily Blunt.

Please let me know what you think?

* * *

A Different Doctor, A Different Exile.

Wrong Time and Rockets.

_Please, not again, _Professor Bernhard Quatermass thought to himself as he desperately bounced in the passenger seat of the van as it drove towards the scene of the crash that had been reported earlier, reminding him of the disaster a few years ago when the experimental rocket ship had crash-landed after it had temporarily vanished from radar, only for an attempted alien invasion to take place.

Quatermass shuddered at the thought of aliens once more interfering in his work; he had deliberately made sure the new rocket probe that had been launched into space three months ago and kept under constant watch while it gathered scientific information as it travelled around the moon and Earth in a wide circle before returning

For three months, Quatermass had been looking forward to the return of the probe, which would contain microfilms containing photographs, x-ray photographs, scientific and technical records on the probes which would help the British Rocket Group devise the next generation of probes which would, hopefully, be launched deeper and deeper into space. He had deliberately made sure the rocket was robotic instead of designing it to be manned, but it wasn't because of any residual fear of that organism that had possessed three of his best astronauts.

_Calm down, for God's sake, calm the hell down! _Bernhard thought to himself as he accidentally caught sight of the worried glances in the driver's face. He closed his eyes and he did his best to calm down, but it was hard because he and his team of computer programmers had spent months and months of designing a way of landing the probe _at the British Rocket Group, _not here ten miles away!

_And yet there was that strange radar signal, _he thought to himself, but he decided to push it aside and not come up with any theories yet until he had actually seen the probe or the flight data.

"How much further?" he asked.

"Another two miles."

Bernhard cursed the British traffic laws, which the driver was adhering to because they were only a few notches below the actual speed limit, but at least they had only another two miles to reach instead of ten. The moment he had seen the probe rocket knocked off course, he had thought the worse. He had been in a terrible state for two hours now.

Bernhard closed his eyes and tried hard to shove his worries and concerns to the foreground. Ever since that mess with the plant organism which had absorbed the crew of the experimental rocket ship, Bernhard had been extremely concerned about the thought of sending anyone back into space until they had learnt more about the risks. In any case, those government officials who had read the now classified details about what happened to Victor and the others on that doomed expedition had been wary of something like that happening again. Quatermass considered the British government as cowardly idiots who were ignorant of the need for humanity to move beyond Earth. Why was it virtually impossible for them to see that his work would help open the door to exploring space? Unfortunately not everyone who had read what had happened to Victor and the others believed it, of course; despite seeing and experiencing the events himself, even Bernhard still couldn't believe it, that terrifying experience with that plant organism, and to this day Bernhard still had _no idea _about what had happened in those minutes the ground crew lost contact with the rocket.

When the vans arrived at the crash site, the drivers showing off identification to the police constables who were trying to stop the crowd from getting too close to the probe, Bernhard's heart sank as he took in the scene of what might very well yet become yet another disaster for him and the Rocket Group. The place was a shambles. The rocket had crashed right into the ground at an angle, and he could feel the heat absorbed through its journey through the atmosphere of the planet radiating from the probe even though the van was driving to park at a spot nearby.

_It wasn't meant to be like this, _he thought desperately as he took in the result of the probe. _There's no chance we can re-use it for the next orbit shot! _The sight of the various cars with the fire engine sitting there was just as upsetting to the scientist, although their presence here was annoying because he had really hoped to avoid another load of grief from the government for another 'folly,' he was grateful that the emergency services were on the ball enough to get here so quickly, but fortunately none of the firemen was spraying water over the rocket, while the police were holding back the civilians who were struggling to take a closer look at the towering and slightly bulbous rocket.

Through his open window, Quatermass could hear the gaggle of voices, some of them claiming the rocket was a missile, that it was going to blow up and kill them all. He shook his head at their paranoia, cursing the current decade, with its fear and its paranoia that anything that came from the sky would mean inevitable and certain death.

Despite that, Bernhard couldn't blame them, really; he had seen how the Germans had used the Doodlebugs to blow parts of London back into the stone age, and many of these civilians were probably old enough to remember those times, which were not helped by the current climate around the world.

Bernhard already had his seatbelt off by the time the van drove to a halt, and he was out even before the driver turned off the engine and he rushed towards the rocket before anybody could stop him. He thought he overheard a few voices behind him, saying something about him not being allowed or something like that, but they were so far from where he was they didn't register anyway as he studied the probe.

The probe was easily taller than a three-storey house, and although it looked more like a nuclear missile which many here suspected it was, it was too bulbous to be a weapon. At the back were the tail-fins which, to an ignorant onlooker would just look like ordinary tail-fins added to a rocket's body for stability. Not these ones. No, they were designed with flight through the atmosphere in mind where it would fly like a conventional aeroplane as it passed through the atmosphere under the British Rocket Group's control.

The sight of the crash site, the crater the impact had caused, and the unopened wings which were designed to extend as soon as the rocket probe was through almost made Bernhard cry. He had spent a lot of time and work with his team of fellow scientists and engineers trying to design and to build a reusable rocket, but now it looked like it was all for nothing.

_Oh, please say the engine and the wing systems are still functional, not to mention the information this probe has been gathering for the last three months, _Bernhard thought to himself desperately (he would not _even think _about the culture container locked inside the probe, but he dearly hoped they wouldn't get a nasty surprise like the one where Victor began to mutate; the thought about what might be lost there was just too depressing).

"It looks reasonably intact, apart from the lack of wings."

The voice to his left made Professor Quatermass turn slightly, and he caught sight of the slim, middle-aged form of Richard Snell. Richard was a rocket engineer like Quatermass was, and he was one of Quatermass' oldest friends. Like Quatermass, Snell was looking at the probe with worry, but he was better at hiding it.

"I'm not worried about the hull," Bernhard replied, glancing at his friend for a moment before he turned back to look at the probe. "I'm more worried about the culture container inside, and the scientific information locked inside it. I don't need to remind you about what's at stake."

"No, you don't," Snell said quietly, but at that moment one of the rocket group's technicians approached. "I've contacted the crane," he reported, "it's on its way. They were not really happy about the short notice, but they're getting it ready now. It should be here within the next four hours."

The crane had been prepared months before the launch to help recover the probe. Based several miles away from the Rocket Group grounds, the crane belonged to a relatively small company that the rocket group made use of every now and then for work like this, although some might argue about the logic of not having a crane near the rocket group's base, but in truth they did, but due to budget cuts - though where the money went, Bernhard didn't know and if he was honest he wasn't sure if he wanted to considering the current aggressive stance which was becoming more and more prevalent around the world - the crane held by the Rocket Group was not designed to lift anything this bulky or heavy, so they had to hire one out that was big and strong enough to do the work.

The only problem was it would take hours for them to arrive, but the obvious benefit there was by the time they turned up the rocket's casing should be fairly cold and easy to lift. By the time they did turn up at the crash-site, Bernhard and the others would have already come up with a plan to better handle the rocket.

"They wouldn't be needed in the first place if this damn thing," Bernhard angrily jabbed his index finger in the direction of the probe, but he lost his anger in a long, drawn-out sigh. "Still, at least we'll be able to get it back to the laboratory where we can go over everything that the probe gleaned."

"Three months in space," the technician whispered, his eyes virtually glassy in awe in the dim light. "Further than any man so far has gone."

"Don't worry," Richard replied, hearing the envy in the technicians' voice, "we'll get out there."

Sounds of approaching footsteps made Bernhard turn his head and he caught sight of a man wearing the peaked cap and uniform of a Police Superintendent. The police officer glanced around briefly. "Which one of you gentlemen is Professor Bernhard Quatermass?" he barked.

"I am," Bernhard stepped forward. He didn't bother to extend his hand because the police officer didn't seem interested in being social. "I am Professor Bernhard Quatermass, British Rocket Group-," he went on, but the superintendent irritably flapped a hand for silence.

"I know who you are, Professor. My orders to stop the civilians from getting to close to your damned contraption came at the wrong time and at short notice," he replied shortly before he looked around, his thin face twisting into something Bernhard thought was a sneer. "When can you get this rocket out of here?"

"Four hours from now," Bernhard replied happily, pleased he was being so unhelpful. The moment this superintendent approached and began speaking, Bernhard knew it would be a waste of time making the man understand the scale of the problems the Rocket Group now he had to face with recovering this probe. "We've called in a crane which will come with the heavy lifting equipment we will need to safely move the rocket back to our facilities."

"Why so late?" the superintendent demanded.

Bernhard sighed. "You're standing close to the answer," he replied, speaking in a slow, patronising tone as he tried to explain. He wasn't in the mood to really speak to anybody aside from his colleagues, and this pompous fool was trying his patience. "The heat from the probe will take time to cool down alone, but we need to check the hull, make a plan in how we can lift it in the first place. That takes time."

"I see," the superintendent commented before he looked at the probe. "It won't explode, will it?"

"No," Bernhard scoffed, annoyed that everyone expected everything new that appeared in their cosy little words to be a threat. "We sent out a signal for it to dump its rocket fuel when it no longer needed any before it re-entered the atmosphere, but otherwise this isn't a bomb. It's a probe rocket."

"A probe rocket?" the superintendent replied. There was that little sneer again. "Sounds like something out of Dan Dare to me."

The attack against their project made all three of the rocket engineers in close proximity angry. Not only was their attempt to actually find a way of controlling a re-entry and land the probe again so none of the delicate instrumentations inside was damaged a virtual failure though they would only know for sure when they got the probe back to the labs, but the belief they were basing their work on what was found in science-fiction annoyed them.

"It's not," Bernard replied shortly, trying to contain his annoyance at the comparison.

"This rocket is real life," Richard snapped, but Bernhard held up a hand to stop his friend from saying anything that could get them into trouble.

"Superintendent," Bernhard said evenly, deciding not to bother trying to explain what the probe was for or what the importance it represented meant to the British Rocket Group alone, or to the other organisations springing up like small blade of grass that was doing what he was trying to do, getting people into space, "Let us worry about the rocket. All you need to do is to get rid of those civilians," he added, waving a hand towards the crowd which were still trying to get through. Bernard didn't understand why they wanted to get so close in the first place unless of course, they wanted to kick the probe for a bet to see whether it would explode. He didn't care. He just wanted them out of his sight.

The police officer turned his head towards the crowd and then turned back to Quatermass. "Professor, we're having a hard time keeping them back as it is," he protested angrily, "I was given orders to follow your instructions, but my men are having problems keeping the civilians away-."

"Then call in more men," Bernard replied, starting to lose his patience. Honestly, why was he having this idiot bleating in his ear every few minutes, and why didn't he seem to have a grain of sense? "We're busy," he added, and he walked off to get away from the fool so he could examine the rocket probe in closer detail.

Richard followed him over, and Bernard turned to him before he looked over his shoulder. The superintendent had marched off and was now bellowing angrily at his constables to keep the civilians away and to push them further back. Bernard turned back to his friend and saw that Richard was studying the rocket probe.

"Just imagine it, in a couple of days time after our analysis of the probe's outer casing, we'll be able to not just see pictures that any astronomer worth their salt would die to examine, but we will also have information about space itself that we can only glean _hints _from down here," Richard commented, his eyes still locked onto the shape of the probe.

"I'm hoping they do. We could use the extra leverage to wrangle some more money out of the government," Bernard remarked, "for the next probes." Suddenly he shook his head in annoyance.

Richard saw Quatermass shaking his head and read the annoyance there. "What is it?" he asked in concern.

"I was hoping to avoid a crash."

"You know something like that are unavoidable," Richard reminded him.

Bernard had to admit his friend had a point, but he was still annoyed and very frustrated. "But we designed that landing option so then we could reuse the probe," he protested, looking at his friend wearily as many sleepless nights began to catch up with him. He had been worried about the eventual outcome of this project. The probe was a make or break experiment. It was designed to go into orbit above the Earth for a bit, then break out of the planet's gravity, and then slingshot its way towards the moon with nothing but the gravitational forces to propel it while it saved its engines for the trip back.

"I know," Richard whispered sympathetically while he saw more members of the Rocket Group approaching with their instruments, knowing just how much work and thought had gone into the project. Bernard had become fascinated in the prospect of developing a reusable rocket, something that could take off, spend time in space for a bit, come back, deploy the secondary wing system and then land like a conventional plane, although this particular plane had been in space and was like a whale that flew.

"Three months can go up in smoke, just like that," Bernard angrily clicked his fingers in emphasis before he calmed down and spotted his colleagues from the British Rocket Group, and he hurried over with Richard in close pursuit.

"Do you know anything about what caused the remote control mechanism to fail?" he asked.

"No," one of the men replied as he started unpacking sensitive looking equipment. "We received a call, radar says the probe just _disappeared _from the screens; one minute it was there, and the remote control was working at the time as you know. Anyway, it just vanished from the screens, and then it was coming down."

Bernard nodded, his frustration growing. He already knew these details. He had been there watching the whole thing on the radar, so what the technician was saying was anything new. "Do any of the radar stations have any idea what caused it?"

"None. Look, Professor," another technician said, "we know how much the probe meant to you, but - What's that noise?"

Bernard had heard it too and was looking around for the source.

Richard hurried over. "What is that sound, it sounds like a car backfiring?"

"I don't know," Bernard said as the sound grew in volume and a wind began to swirl around them and became stronger before out of thin air a glowing light appeared followed by a tall shape that became more defined very quickly before a familiar metropolitan blue police box appeared in thin air.

Richard stared at the shape of the police box in confusion. "That's not possible, how is that possible?"

Bernard was just as confused, but after everything he had seen, the rocket scientist was unwilling to immediately claim something as impossible though he knew his friend hadn't said that because it was impossible, it was just unusual. Who knew what went on out in space? "How did a _police box _do that?" he asked.

Suddenly the door clicked open and a woman with light brown hair streaked slightly with blonde stepped out of the box, wearing an oversized black coat, a wide-collared shirt with a messy, frayed looking bow tie and chequered trousers that looked like they were only a few days from being thrown out. The woman had a dazed and confused expression on her face.

"Hello, could…. you tell me what year….this is?" the woman asked, her voice slurring slightly as though she were drunk.

Bernard was a little surprised by the question and the mental state of the woman. His first instinct was to dismiss her as a drunk, but he didn't because of the police box which had just appeared from nowhere. "What year this is?"

The woman nodded, looking as if the conversation was helping…whatever it was happening to her. "Yes," she replied.

Bernard and Richard glanced at each other before looking back at the woman, both very confused, and both thinking that she was drunk despite her appearance. "It's 1954," Bernard replied, hoping that by cooperating with the woman then they'd get answers, but the woman looked stunned. She staggered back slightly, almost collapsing against the police box.

"1954?" she repeated. "But…I should be later than that. Much later."

"What do you mean?" Richard asked, but the woman didn't listen.

She looked up into the sky and opened her mouth to yell. "You idiots!" she shouted, "Call yourselves Time Lords! You just had one job to do, getting me into the sixties or seventies-ooh!" the woman suddenly choked in mid-yell and leaned against the box, coughing as though she was about to vomit.

Concerned Bernard and Richard stepped closer. "Are you alright, what's wrong with you?"

The woman managed to regain control of herself and lifted her head. "It's alright," she gasped. "Don't worry, please - it's perfectly…normal," she hiccuped slightly, and a stream of golden particles left her mouth.

Bernard stared after the particles, his scientific curiosity piqued. "What was that?"

The woman patted her chest and gasped, closing her eyes for a moment before she reopened them. "Who are you?" she asked, her tone and her posture making it clear she wasn't going to explain anything until she got the answers she wanted.

"I am Professor Bernard Quatermass, British Rocket Group," Bernard replied, slightly befuddled about why he was bothering to answer this woman's questions.

"Richard Snell," Richard stepped forward, looking down at the woman as if he were trying to understand her. Bernard hoped he was having more luck because he certainly wasn't.

Instead, the woman looked at Bernard thoughtfully. "Bernard Quatermass, I think I've heard that name before," she began thoughtfully, but then she shrugged and smiled up at them, but then the sight of the rocket drew her attention. She straightened up and walked over to the rocket. "Ooh," she cooed with amazement. "A rocket. No," she corrected herself, looking away for a moment before she brightened up and nodded, looking more like a little girl about to ride a pony, "a probe rocket."

"How do you know that?" Richard asked suspiciously.

"Hmm?" the woman replied, turning to face him for a moment. "Well, it's obvious. Too small for interplanetary travel, no viewing ports, just an electronic viewing suite."

"How do you know that?" Bernard repeated Richard's question, looking at the woman worriedly, wondering if this woman was part of one of those rival rocketry groups. _No, that doesn't make any sense, what about the police box? _

The woman smiled. "I can see the sensors," she explained quietly before she shrugged. "It's an advanced piece of work for this point in the 20th century, but its a bit crude in some ways….. Oooh, hold on a second," she suddenly said, looking thoughtful and pained at the same time. "I…. am…..the Doctor!"

Suddenly she closed her eyes and collapsed to the ground. Bernard rushed forwards and gently examined the woman. She seemed alright, but he wasn't certain; while he had first aid training at hand, he didn't want to try his luck.

"How is she?" Richard asked quietly, looking down at the woman with concern.

Bernard didn't know how to answer that question, but he touched her throat and was surprised by how cold it was. He frowned when he found that her heartbeat seemed off. He picked up her wrist and checked her pulse, and after a moment he looked up at Richard. "Richard, this woman has _two separate pulses," _he said urgently.

Richard looked at him stiffly as the implication made its way into his mind. "How is that possible?" he asked, feeling like he was starting a new theme.

Bernard shrugged but he looked at the woman with a cross between fear, concern, and wonderment. "I don't think…. this woman is human, Richard," he whispered. He raised his voice. "We have to get her back to the Rocket Group hanger. We have a sickbay there, and I don't want her out of our sight."

"Do you think that's wise?"

Bernard went still as he remembered the nightmare caused by his last experiment, but he had the feeling this would be different, and besides, he and the others had learnt from those mistakes of the past. "I think it's better she came with us," he replied, but then his eyes went to the police box. "That police box will have to come with us. We could always tell the workmen we're taking it as a decoration."

* * *

"_**MALFUNCTION. WARP FIELD DESTABILISED."**_

The voice of the computer was eerily calm, but then it shared the same emotionless qualities of its builders despite the urgency of the situation.

It was chaos in the control room of the ship. It had approached the Earth slowly after leaving warp drive after being travelling through space shooting ahead of its mother planet as it slowly made its return back to the home solar system after being separated from it for aeons. It was one of many such ships launched to study Earth.

As it had surveyed the planet, its technology shielding it with methods currently beyond the level of 20th century Earth.

The mission had been going well, and then a near collision with the primitive space probe which had appeared blasting its way back to the planet, and had interfered with the ships' warp engines, destabilising the warp field and causing both ships to be knocked off course. The occupants of the ship did not know and did not care about the probe - they were incapable of that - and tried to stabilise their ship, but the destabilisation of the warp field had knocked their ships' navigational computer out of phase.

As they struggled to regain control, the ship's computer blared an alarm continuously. "_**MALFUNCTION. WARP FIELD DESTABILISED."**_

The computer changed the message as its sensors detected a gravitational shift. "_**WARNING - THIS SHIP IS ABOUT TO CRASH. GRAVITATIONAL SHIFT INTERFACING WITH WARP FIELD. UNABLE TO BREAKAWAY."**_


	2. Chapter 2 The Doctor and the Professor

I own nothing.

Please let me know what you think, I am trying to do something different here with this story.

In this chapter, the Doctor and Professor Quatermass get to know each other, although they've got a long way to go.

* * *

Wrong Time and Rockets.

"_Doctor….. Sorry, but you're about to make a very big mistake… Don't steal that one, steal this one. The navigation systems' knackered but you'll have much more fun…!"_

"_Grandfather!"_

"_CARE? NO…. WHY…SHOULD I…..CARE?….. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOU. THERE ARE PEOPLE DYING ALL OVER YOUR WORLD, YET YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT THEM…."_

"_You have desstroyed our fleet!" _

"_SHALL WE DESTROY?"_

"…_ALL GONDS LEAVE THE HALL NOW…."_

"_You were told to keep away from the Quarks!"_

"_Exterminate!"_

"_YOU WILL BE LIKE US!"_

"_Doctor, it's more fun my way. I can make things happen ahead of their time!"_

"_You are wasting time, Doctor… Since you refuse to take the decision, the decision will be made for you!….SILENCE! You have tried the patience of this court long enough, Doctor. Now, which new appearance will you take if you are mature enough to even decide, that is…."_

The Doctor's eyes snapped awake as she came prematurely out of her healing coma, though she winced as the…whatever it was….juddered around, but as she looked around to take in her surroundings she found that she was in the back of a very cramped van on a makeshift bed. Still shaken a little bit out of the memories of some of the beings she had encountered, from the Cybermen of both Telos and Mondas, the Daleks, the Krotons, the Dominators, among other things although the memory of the trial she'd had on Gallifrey before the Celestial Intervention Agency forced her and Serena to check out that dimly remembered, albeit convoluted mess of a game organised by the Countess and the rest of the Players, they helped her to recover some of her memory as she looked around. She saw she wasn't alone. Near her, looking concerned was the man who had introduced himself as Professor Bernard Quatermass.

_Quatermass. I know I've heard that name before, _the Doctor thought to herself, cursing her post-regeneration memory; she dimly tried to remember if it had been _this _bad the last time she had come out of the regeneration after that mess with Mondas and the Cybermen at the Snowcap base, but her mind was still fogged about the details.

"Are you alright?" the scientist asked her in concern as he leaned over her while the van they were in juddered around. "I'm sorry about the roads, they're not very well laid down."

The Doctor closed her eyes and forced down another surge of post-regeneration nausea.

"Miss?" Quatermass began, but before he could say anything else the Doctor was looking at him seriously all of a sudden. "Why are you calling me miss?"

Quatermass stumbled back when he saw the woman's eyes and the force behind them. "Erm….because you are?"

The Doctor's face brightened a little bit, remembering that she was indeed female in this new body, that moment where she had asked him why he was calling her miss was just one of those brief spells of post-regeneration amnesia which lasted a few seconds. "I am? Tell me, does it suit me?" she asked, looking at him hopefully; maybe this new regeneration wouldn't be so bad after all.

Quatermass looked at her in confusion. "I'm sorry."

The Doctor chuckled. "It's alright," she replied soothingly though inwardly she wished she was still in the coma. "I'm sorry; a few hours ago, I was a little tramp of a man with black hair. How long was I asleep?"

Although confused by what she'd just said, Quatermass checked his watch for a second. "About an hour," he replied.

The Doctor groaned. "Not even three hours," she muttered.

"What happened to you?" Quatermass asked as he leaned forward, his eyes bright with curiosity.

The Doctor recognised the scientific curiosity instantly, but she had no intention of telling the man anything until she had gotten some of her mind back from the regeneration. She once more cursed her previous self for not only getting her into this mess because, like their first incarnation, their knowledge of the TARDIS was so incredibly shoddy they had believed the damaged and heavily malfunctioning Type 40 - why they had to listen to that Time Lady the Doctor could only currently remember dimly as though she had been seen in a puff of smoke, and not take that Type 53, the Doctor did not know, though that stupid Time Lady who'd recommended the TARDIS and the faulty navigational circuit had made her first incarnation's choice easy since with a malfunctioning unit, it would be hard for the Time Lords to track. At first, it had worked, and her first self had considered the old Type 40 more than enough, and with it so badly damaged and their travels so random, the Time Lords would never catch up with them. But that mess where she had tried to get Ian and Barbara, and then later Ben and Polly home had driven home the problems she had with the TARDIS, to say nothing of that mess with the War Games when she'd needed to get those soldiers home, which had resulted in her calling in the Time Lords anyway.

Yes, while she still liked the old Type 40, no - loved was more the correct word, she just wished her previous self, who had gained just a better knowledge out of their first regeneration of how the older time-ship worked instead of just being content with the random nature of their travels through time and space had done some work on the old TARDIS and repaired it so then they could have avoided the Time Lords for good.

The Doctor, try as she might, understood the logic, but her second self had been so stupid during the trial, he had angered the Time Lords. The Doctor looked down at her chest (_**THIS **__will definitely take some getting used to, _she thought to herself as she looked at her chest, the most obvious sign of her new gender; she had noticed it as soon as she had regenerated, but at the time she had put it down to post-regenerative jitters, but it was obvious that her new breasts, like the Inhibitor she had seen on the console, were a sign of how much things had changed).

Realising the human scientist had asked his question again, the Doctor looked up at him and sighed. "It's a long story," she replied; there were still some parts of it which she still couldn't reach, and that worried her; she still wasn't sure _who this scientist was_, even though it was on the tip of her brain, but she decided to throw him a bone, as the humans said, "My memory isn't one-hundred per-cent, but if you could tell me about that rocket, then it might help; I've heard talking is a good way of exercising the mind."

Quatermass sent her a sceptical look, but he seemed happy enough to talk. "Alright, the rocket was a probe, just like you deduced," he replied, though for a second he wanted to know how she had even known _that _little detail, but he decided to press on before the Doctor interrupted.

"Hold on, this is England, right?" she said, looking at him quizzically. "I didn't know Britain had rockets or did I?"

Quatermass looked affronted. "If you think you know me at all, then you'd know we had rockets," he replied indignantly, "its what the British Rocket Group does."

The Doctor gaped at him, and she felt some of her memory coming back to her. _British Rocket Group… THE British Rocket GROUP!? Of course! Why am I being so slow? Oh, yes, regeneration…._She slapped herself in the head to further loosen it.

"The British Rocket Group? I know who you are now, or rather, I know where I've heard of you," the Doctor said, correcting herself mid-sentence as she looked at Quatermass with a smile. "Professor Bernard Quatermass, rocket scientist."

Quatermass was overwhelmed by the reaction he had just received, so it took a moment for him to recover his composure. "Er…yes, that's me," he replied at last before he shook his head and looked at the Doctor seriously. "So if you know who I am now, surely I don't need to tell you what we do?" he added wryly with ironic good humour.

The Doctor laughed. "You don't," she smiled warmly at him before she clapped her hands together with the smile on her face still. "I have heard of you, Professor. I know you sent up one of the first manned flights into space, and it looks like you're continuing with your experiments."

When she had first arrived in Totters Lane two lifetimes ago with Susan, the Doctor had visited a public library and she had gotten hold of a library card. She had been fascinated with learning more about human history, and at the time she had felt the only way to do that was to go over everything that she could find. One of the first things she had done was to study the fairly recent human history from the old newspapers which had been collected by the library, and she had come across a rocket launch organised by Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Rocket Group. The newspapers had gone mad on the subject of space travel, but after that details of the event, of the crew of the manned rocket, just became vague.

The Doctor noticed very clearly that Quatermass instead of looking pleased that she knew about what he had done instead looked a bit sad, brooding about the reminder (_I certainly have changed, _the Doctor thought to herself; a few days ago she would have barely noticed if someone was depressed, but now she was truly looking. _This new body is certainly going to take time to get used to, especially if I am more sensitive….). _

"Did I say something wrong?" the Doctor asked.

"Hmm?" the scientist replied before he shook his head. "No, it's just the rocket I sent up…the crew were absorbed by an alien plant organism…"

"A Krynoid?" the Doctor interrupted, looking desperately at the scientist.

Quatermass again looked startled. "Sorry?"

"It's an…alien plant," the Doctor began to explain, deciding that because Quatermass seemed to have an open mind he would listen to her though she decided to give him a basic summary of what the Krynoids were and what they did, "they're essentially seen as galactic weeds, but they're much worse than that. They send themselves out in space, always in pairs, and when they arrive on a planet and take root, all animal life becomes extinct very quickly. They also have a habit of infecting other beings, and slowly taking them and turning them into a Krynoid."

"There wasn't another creature," Quatermass replied, looking at her with something like excitement that he was hearing about an alien lifeform, even if the basic summary of what it did was grim. "And in any case," he went on when he realised something which contradicted what the Doctor had just described, "the creature that came to Earth and absorbed those astronauts _passed _through the rocket's hull."

The Doctor was only mildly surprised. She knew of several forms of life out there that could pass through space as easily as a bird could fly through the air, but this was beyond her at the moment. "I'm sorry," she said at last, "I can't picture an organism that can do that at the moment. My mind is still sorting itself out. But tell me about that probe."

"After what happened with the planet organism, the government classified most of it and buried it quietly. I was disappointed about that because if we had more minds studying outer space and the organisms out there we would be able to learn a lot more. Anyway, when I wrote a report detailing the need for a government fund to be injected into the program to construct another rocket, several of the government who knew about what had happened with the previous astronauts put their foot down. They agreed to fund a rocket so long as no lives were put at risk," Quatermass explained.

"But the risk is a part of everything!"

Quatermass nodded. "I know. But personally, I think the government were wary of what could come back to Earth. They went to a lot of trouble to ensure no-one knew about what had happened with the last rocket. I don't know what they did about the witnesses when the plant organism which was a merge of the three-man crew from the experimental rocket, but I do know the government forced me into a corner. But I was alright with it. I was worried myself about the prospect of another friend, someone whom I knew, becoming an alien creature beyond our understanding," he looked down suddenly as the memories of what had happened to Victor started to haunt him, and he had to push it aside so he could focus on the conversation. "Sometimes I believe the British government are full of over-cautious idiots. Many of them look at my work into rocketry and they instantly see it as a war weapon, they refer to it as the 'ultimate weapon," he sneered the words. "Poppycock. There's no such thing as the ultimate weapon."

The Doctor was smiling at the man who earning himself more and more points though she had long since admired him from those half-remembered newspaper articles about the man that she had read with Susan in those months where the TARDIS had been in that junkyard in Shoreditch before Ian and Barbara turned up despite all the previous close calls in the past, but meeting a man who seemed he agreed with her about weapons it assured the Doctor was a kindred spirit out there.

But she certainly agreed with him about that stance on weapons. The humans were at a point in their development where the most powerful weapons they had available were rockets equipped with warheads and the nuclear bomb. How wrong could they be?

The Doctor took a moment to reflect on the weapons that she knew about, and how the humans had yet to discover the long term dangers out there in space.

They didn't know anything about the Daleks, who had created their travel shell technology to both allow their race a means to survive otherwise they'd be hopeless, crippled, stunted creatures whose ancestors were able to walk upright and handle technology, only to go on to become terrible weapons of war. They didn't know anything about the projects those mutated misfits had created in order to make their conquest of the universe simpler, from their plan to transform Earth into a massive spaceship when they tried to implement Operation De-Gravitate.

The Daleks had come up several ways of battering down the Earth to wipe out as many innocent human beings as they could, like with biological weapons or cosmic rays, or their time travel technology, like that primitive TT capsule modelled on Time Lord technology. There was no doubt in the Doctor's mind the Daleks would have used the same technology to conquer as much of the universe and at different points of history as they could, though how far they'd have gotten before the Time Lords got involved, she didn't know. Another example was the Time Destructor which had resulted in the deaths of four people whom the Doctor had liked, including two women who could have become long-term great friends.

The Doctor doubted she would ever truly escape from the memories of that truly sick project the Dalek Emperor had come up with to distil the so-called 'human factor' though the long-term goal was to isolate the 'Dalek Factor' instead and spreading it through time and space in the TARDIS.

What about the Cybermen? They had tried to use a Cyber-Megatron bomb to shatter a large part of Earth, wiping out millions of potential stock they'd wanted to convert. Or how about the time earlier, in the Doctor's own respective timeline, when the Mondasian Cybermen had tried to use the Z-Bomb to destroy the Earth because they'd underestimated just how much of Earth's own energy was being absorbed by their planet? Or how about the Cyber-matter/antimatter vortex bomb they had tried to use to destroy Voga and blast the Planet of Gold into atoms so it would never be a threat to the Cyber-race ever again?

And then there were the Krotons, who had turned the planet of the Gonds into a toxic wasteland. Granted, what the Krotons had done on the grand scale of genocidal weapons was rather small scale if you looked at it from a certain angle, but the fact that years after the wasteland had been created by the Krotons caused terrible and painful deaths was telling about the potency of the weapon.

The Doctor also remembered her struggle with the Dominators shortly after she and Jamie had dealt with yet another encounter with the Cybermen on the Wheel and had taken Zoe with them to Dulkis, only to discover the Dominators about to unleash that Atomic Seed Device into the planets core to transform the lava into a mass of radioactive material for their fleet.

How about the Ice Warriors with the sonic weapons they had invented, and what about that fungus they had unleashed on the Earth in the 21st century when T-Mat had taken over from every transportation system on the planet? The Doctor dimly remembered how she had been taken by surprise when Slaar (was it Slaar?) ordered her to examine one of the seed pods, only for it to blow up like a balloon and burst in her face, sucking all of the air from her vicinity and forcing her to spend a couple of hours in an automatic healing coma in order to recover from losing the air so quickly. She would also not forget seeing the fungus covering the surface of the Earth like a frothing blanket, bursting every few minutes and sucking more and more air away and turning the planet into a copy of Mars though all that was left were the inhabitants of Mars.2.

Her encounters with the Sontarans and the Rutans were limited in themselves, but the Doctor definitely knew of how, every few centuries, both sides came up with new weapons of warfare. She knew after Spectronic drive had been invented, the Sontarans had invented hyperdrive technology to counter the Rutan Host's probes before they had launched a fleet of war missiles through hyperspace to various Rutan worlds to break the stalemate they'd been locked in for 50,000 years.

The Rutans themselves had created that genetic weapon that swept through the galaxy like a virus that specifically targeted Sontaran DNA in retaliation before the Sontarans managed to beat the odds and survived. Weapon after weapon after weapon… both sides were locked in a stalemate while their scientific units devised new ways of destruction on different levels, but the most memorable conflict the Doctor remembered hearing about was when the Sontarans had dispatched a small fleet of cruisers carrying the building blocks to devise a vast new Sontaran army, only for them to destroy the entire galaxy by accident when they misjudged the potency of the Starbreaker weapon.

But the majority of those weapons were like stone clubs when you compared them to the weapons of the Time Lords. Look at the D-Mat gun that could erase beings or objects from history in a more potent example of Time Lord dematerialisation. One blast of the D-Mat gun and no-one would ever remember your existence. The Hand of Omega hadn't been designed to be a weapon, but if anybody got hold of it then they could destroy themselves since the Hand was capable of flying off into a star and then causing a supernova.

But the Doctor had heard legends of beings who had left behind weapons that made even those of the Time Lords look crude, but she had never been sure.

"You're right there, Professor, and it is foolish for the British government to be short-sighted; you have no idea just how close you are to taking your first steps into a whole new world," the Doctor smiled at the human scientist.

The Doctor's smile faded a little bit when the rocket scientist suddenly looked at her oddly. "Yes," Quatermass replied slowly, "but you haven't explained to me yet who you are. What that police box is. And what that…substance," he stumbled over the word as he tried to find the right term to describe the stream of golden particles that she coughed out earlier, "you breathed out when you came out, and what is wrong with you. Why you said you were a little man a few moments ago. And how you seem to have two hearts?" Quatermass tilted his head to the side as he looked at her pointedly though there was a concern that which was touching, really.

The Doctor wasn't surprised that she had been examined, although from the initial glance around the van there were no medical instruments to perform even the most basic examination. In any case, she had to admit the scientist deserved some explanation especially since he had won her respect even in her first incarnation, but at the same time, she wondered just how much she could explain without sounding like she was insane…In the end, she decided to just get it over with.

"I'm not human," she replied, though why she said that she truly didn't know, but she realised it was just a good idea to start with the basics, "I am an alien, that's why I have two hearts. I'm not like the creature you encountered. I also have no evil intentions against you or this planet. I'm just here now. As for who I am…. I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey," the Doctor crinkled her eyes for a moment before she looked down at her chest, "actually that should be Time Lady. When I said I was a little man a few moments ago I meant it. My people have a way of healing our bodies when we're subjected to traumas or illnesses. We call it regeneration and when it happens the old body dies before we enter a new life, a new incarnation. On the point of regeneration, our bodies are energised with an energy which rebuilds them. All organs are replaced, the injuries are repaired, and we change height, weight, appearance. For instance, I can go from looking like a short man to a really tall man in a flash. But we can change gender as well," the Doctor smiled and gestured to herself. "This is the first incarnation I've had where I have a female body. Both of my previous lives were male, so it will take time before I adjust and its too early for me to tell what's different despite the obvious."

"I see," Quatermass replied weakly, trying to get his mind around the influx of information he was getting before he moved on though he was in two minds about the Doctor's claim of being male twice and now she was suddenly a female, but after what he had seen , "And that substance you released..that's part of this…regeneration?"

"Yes," the Doctor nodded in confirmation, "it is. It's like a rush of adrenaline; even after the cause of the rush has subsided, the body still has an increased count of adrenaline. It's no different for Time Lords after regeneration. I've only just regenerated, Professor. My body is bursting with energy, and when I breathed it out I was trying to expel the excess energy."

Quatermass was fascinated by this conversation but he knew he had to move on. "And that police box?"

The Doctor laughed, partly because she had known the subject would crop up at some point but also because she knew this would be even harder for Professor Quatermass to accept. "The TARDIS. It's my ship," she replied, looking at the scientist to gauge his reactions.

She wasn't disappointed. "Your….ship?" Quatermass repeated sceptically. "It just seems….small."

The Doctor laughed again; Ian had annoyed her original self with his never-ending scepticism about the TARDIS and its capabilities, but once he had seen for himself that the TARDIS had travelled back to Stone Age times and then later to Skaro, he'd quickly changed his mind and his views about what he believed he knew about the universe. And ever since then the Doctor had learnt to take people's reactions to Time Lord technology into her stride. This was no different, and besides that Quatermass was more experienced and open-minded than Ian Chesterton. "It's not," she replied, though she wondered how she was going to explain dimensional transcendentalism, "Tell me some more about this probe," she said instead, wanting to change the subject.

It was extremely tricky to describe a TARDIS to a human, and it would be better for her to reveal it to Quatermass and any scientist he'd like although the Doctor was currently reluctant to have anyone inside her ship. Her TARDIS was her lifeline even if it badly needed an overhaul and work down to so many of its systems, to say nothing of removing the Inhibitor she had dimly seen when the regeneration was over, and the last thing she wanted was anyone getting any ideas about taking it from her.

Quatermass seemed happy about the change of subject, and the Doctor guessed that with so many different concepts cropping up in a brief three-minute conversation, he would need time to properly assimilate them. She only privately hoped when he saw the interior of the TARDIS, he was prepared for a lot more.

"I just do not understand what happened. The probe was sent out months ago to photograph and scientifically analyse outer space in the immediate vicinity of Earth. I was looking forward to studying the information myself, but I was also drawing up plans on constructing a new generation of space probes which could travel around the solar system, and come back with a wealth of scientific information. I was also hoping to present astronomical pictures to different groups, and arrange for funding for my experiments," Quatermass said and he spoke passionately at first, but with the last few words, he became more downcast as if he had already condemned the probe as a failure.

"Why do you think it hasn't worked? The probe looked fine to me," the Doctor asked mildly.

Quatermass lifted his head. "Because it wasn't meant to crash. You don't come from this planet, but I'm sure you're aware of how rockets tend to crash?"

"Yes, I do," the Doctor replied while mentally thinking _especially primitive designs, _but she didn't dare say it out aloud.

"I wanted to change that," Quatermass said, looking desperately at the Time Lady so she understood, "I wanted to design and build a probe that went up like a rocket, but when it returned, it would deploy wings and a rotor propeller system so it would fly like a conventional plane."

"Ah," the Doctor replied as she began to see the problem, "and because it didn't-?"

"It's a failure," Quatermass looked down. "All because of a malfunction with the radar, I can't find out what happened. I have worked long and hard to get Man into space, Doctor. A very long time. Years and years of work, frustrated by politicians who want rockets to be destructive instead of something more. And now my hopes have gone down the drain with the failure."

The Doctor leaned forward and gently petted Quatermass on the shoulder to soothe his nerves, the scientist looked at her in surprise as if surprised an alien would do something like that, but the Doctor quickly spoke before he said anything. "Professor, how about I take a look?" the Doctor offered, making the scientist look at her with surprise. "I can use the TARDIS to find out what really happened, and then we can really start to understand this mystery."

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Author's note - At the top of the page are a number of quotes. The first is from Clara Oswald, though I had debated about using her. The next is Susan. Next is the Mondasian Cyberman in the second episode of 'The Tenth Planet' as it debates with Polly about emotion. The next quote comes from Slaar, the Ice Lord in charge of the Ice Warriors on the Moon in "The Seeds of Death." The next quote down comes from the Quarks from the story "The Dominators," while the one below comes from the Kroton automatic warning system in "The Krotons," while the next is a quote from one of the Dominators. The Exterminate is from a Dalek and the one below is that of the Cyber-Controller seen in 'The Tomb of the Cybermen.' The next one below is a quote from the Meddling Monk from 'The Time Meddler.'

But the one below that is from the presiding Time Lord from 'The War Games,' but while it is the same as the one in canon, the divergence where this universe separates is clear. There will be more about the trial and its differences later.

What did you think of the Doctor's conversation with Quatermass? How do you see it going?

Please drop me a line.

Enjoy.


	3. Chapter 3 Warp Bounce

I own nothing.

Feedback would be lovely since I am doing something new.

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Wrong time and Rockets.

As she waited for the gang of men who had brought back the TARDIS along with the probe rocket to lower the police box shell of her ship on the far side of the hanger where the probe would be taken apart and analysed while she stood with Professor Quatermass and Richard Snell, the Doctor couldn't help but take the time to consider the changes in her life.

Her recent regeneration was hard to take; she had been dreading the prospect of losing one of her lives when she had only been in her last body a couple of decades, but the missions the CIA had given her had only delayed the inevitable. That was one of the reasons she had always indulged as she had during the ball thrown at the height of Napoleon's power, so then she would savour what life she had left.

In truth, she had been frightened of going through with regeneration again. It had been a painful nightmare the first time around, not helped when her first incarnation had plenty of life left to it until that mess with the Dalek Time destructor on Kembel where the time energy had accelerated the age of her first body, pushing her first regeneration closer. When it had happened after being accelerated by Mondas' presence, the Doctor had never felt such tremendous agony before and the last thing her immediate predecessor had wanted was to go through it again.

But now that it had happened, the Doctor knew it would take a while to sort through her new persona and the likes and dislikes that would come with it. New regenerations always took time, it was normal. But this was not a normal regeneration, and her experience with new incarnations was limited since she had only regenerated only one time before this new life.

She wasn't looking forward to that part of trying to work out what type of woman she was now.

The Doctor rubbed her hands awkwardly as she thought about the change in gender. It was bad enough going through a regeneration again after suffering through the pain of it once before, but to go through a _sex-change _regeneration. No wonder the Time Lords presiding over her trial had sounded….dubious, though at the time she had been too busy sulking at being treated like a child to properly notice. The irony being her previous self had been acting like a child.

And then there was her exile to Earth. The Doctor had nothing against the planet although she did find humans rather frustrating which coupled with their innermost strengths made them endearing, that didn't mean she liked the thought of being on this planet for Rassilon only knew how long.

The idea of being confined to a single planet for centuries filled her with dread, but for all she knew the Time Lords might only release her when she had been trapped on Earth for a thousand years, or even at the point where her third incarnation was about to die and enter her fourth incarnation.

The idea of wasting an entire incarnation on a planet when she had nearly been driven insane living on Gallifrey until she was nearly four centuries old filled her with terror but at this point, she had no clear idea of what she could do to escape.

Once the workmen were finished, Bernard nodded his thanks. "Thank you," he said to them.

The workmen mumbled together and went off, more than happy to get back to their proper work with the probe, and clearly wondering to themselves why their project leader was more concerned with a battered old police box.

Quatermass turned to the Doctor and held out his hand. "Well, Doctor," he said.

The Doctor silently walked over to the TARDIS - she cursed her shoes, but until she had sorted her new personality out, she didn't want to change her clothes just yet - and took the key out of her pocket before she slipped it into the lock, her hand brushing against the outer shell and feeling the reassuring vibrations coming from the time-ship. The Doctor frowned as she felt the vibrations, instantly able to tell that the TARDIS seemed subdued.

The Doctor knew how the TARDIS felt; yes, although she had long since claimed the TARDIS was nothing more than a machine, she knew that TARDISes were, in fact, sentient time-ships, but at this point in time she wasn't sure what to think, she had dozens of problems of her own as it was. She ignored it when she realised the two human scientists behind her were growing impatient. She turned the key and stepped inside, smiling as she took in the familiar roundelled walls and the antiques her first incarnation had collected scattered around the room, and the overall shabbiness that had always been so comfortable over the last few years.

The Doctor walked up to the console, and immediately she saw the inhibitor the Time Lords had placed on the TARDIS. She closed her eyes for a minute, seeing the sight of the Inhibitor on the console brought home her current situation. If she had needed physical proof beyond her new regeneration about her exile, this was it.

"How is this possible?"

The Doctor turned and saw that Quatermass and Snell had both walked into the TARDIS. Their reactions to the interior of the time machine were as amusing as it was always. The Doctor just remained silent as she watched as the two humans walked around the console room, examining every inch that they could.

"This place defies everything we know about physics," Snell whispered to Quatermass.

Quatermass nodded before he turned to the Doctor. "This is your TARDIS?"

"This is my TARDIS," the Doctor replied, smiling at them.

"But it was a police box…," Snell was still looking around as he struggled to understand.

"It is on the outside, although that's more of a disguise. It's not really the actual form of the TARDIS," the Doctor shrugged dismissively.

Quatermass turned to her. "What do you mean, it's a disguise?"

"Just that. TARDISes are designed and programmed never to change history; to do that, the outer shell is designed to blend in with the surroundings so the locals aren't frightened or they create some weird myth about the time machine as it arrives or leaves. The TARDIS is fitted with a chameleon circuit. When the ship lands on a planet, it creates a data map of the surrounding area, and unless you program the circuit before the landing, the TARDIS will appear as the object it selects," the Doctor explained casually.

"So you landed and then programmed it to change into a police box?" Snell asked, nodding in understanding as he accepted the logic. Even Quatermass felt he understood the need to have the chameleon circuit.

The Doctor chuckled. "No, I didn't," she replied, "this TARDIS's chameleon circuit has been in the shape of a police box for some time; I'm not sure why, and I don't know if the circuit's fault was gradual or if it was flawed the whole time before I…acquired the TARDIS and left my planet. It used to work, but then after a trip to 1963, the circuit failed and its been in the current shape ever since."

Only one part of the Doctor's statement struck Snell, who was still looking around the TARDIS in amazement. He was trying to work out how the machine was bigger on the inside, how it travelled and how it changed its shape, but only one thing penetrated his mind and he glanced at the Doctor in surprise.

"1963?" he whispered.

The Doctor nodded. "Yes, 1963. Only a few years from now."

Quatermass looked around the control room and mentally tried to measure how large it was relative to the size of the blue box that made up its disguise. "How is it bigger on the inside?" he asked.

The Doctor smiled. It was very rare someone who came inside the TARDIS asked her about how the interior dimension was large, they just gawped and gaped around them. Even Zoe hadn't really bothered to ask, but whether the girl had some idea or had worked out some theory for herself, the Doctor honestly didn't know but she wished Zoe was here right now along with Jamie.

Shoving the pain of their departure from her mind since it wasn't going to bring them back, the Doctor thought for a moment about the best way she could explain that one. "The TARDIS interior is large because space expands to accommodate time, so essentially we are inside a fourth dimension."

Quatermass didn't understand it.

Fortunately, Richard moved them on a little bit.

"And you can go anywhere you like?"

"I can, although it's more accurate to say the TARDIS will take me where it likes."

"You mean you can't control it?"

"Not really," the Doctor admitted although it was very pained. "I was never trained to handle a TARDIS like this. Well, I mean this old, but over the years I've gotten better, but the navigational circuits don't work, so the TARDIS lands in places where I don't want to be."

Quatermass assimilated everything the Doctor had just said, and he wanted to laugh at how this alien with super-advanced technology couldn't travel to where she wanted to, but he held back the urge when he saw the section of the console room separated by plastic or glass? screen doors where he saw a bank of machines like computers but he also saw a doorway leading to parts of the time machine unknown.

"Just how big is this ship?" he asked curiously

"Big," the Doctor said distractedly when she went to the console when she remembered what she had come in here for; this wasn't the time to get into details about the TARDIS though any other time and she would explain more, but she wanted this mystery over and done with so she could sort herself out. She did spare the space Quatermass was staring at with a longing look, but she busied herself at the console, deliberately not looking at the inhibitor.

Snell came to stand next to her and studied the console. "It doesn't look very advanced," he commented.

"Doesn't look very advanced?!" the Doctor chided, swinging her head around to gape at the man in disbelief before she returned to her work while she struggled to remember how to do this; it had been a very long time since she had needed to use the scanner to run a check on the solar system of a planet, and besides she needed to test just how extensive the Time Lord block was on her memory. "This is a Type 40 TARDIS; if it was fully functional it would be able to take you to any point in history on any date in a planet's existence. And besides, as a time machine, TARDISes are designed to symbolise what they do, travel through history."

Quatermass looked down at the console in fascination as he tried to work out what the controls were for. But before he could ask the Doctor let out a laugh of triumph. "I've done it," she announced, and she was about to switch on the wall scanner for them all to see, but then she decided to switch on the scanner built into the roundel near the console. Quatermass and Snell were both taken aback by the sudden image they were seeing. The Doctor walked over to it, smiling in satisfaction. She turned back to Quatermass with that same smug, little girl smile she'd worn earlier. "See, I told you I could do it," she turned back to the screen and her expression became serious while Quatermass came over to stand besides her.

Quatermass stared at the blue-black vista that was clearly designed to represent space beyond Earth while blue spherical shape resembling the planet appeared as well, rotating slowly on its axis. On the screen, he watched as a dot that clearly the probe made its return to Earth. Quatermass frowned when he saw that everything seemed to have been working perfectly.

"What's that?" Richard asked, jabbing his finger at another dot that had just appeared as the Earth rotated. Quatermass rubbed his jawbone with his thumb thoughtfully when he saw that this new dot was surrounded by a sphere that rippled around itself.

The Doctor took a step closer to examine the picture. "It's a warp field," she replied and she narrowed her eyes thoughtfully as the dot representing the probe drew closer, "and if I'm not mistaken-Ah!

The dot representing the probe suddenly bounced off of the second dot.

"A warp bounce," the Doctor whispered. "Now it makes sense."

Quatermass turned to glare at her. "I'm glad it makes sense to you-," he began but the Doctor waved her hand.

"No. I'm just saying that now we know what happened to your probe, so many questions have just been answered," the Doctor clarified as she walked back to the console, and with nothing better to do the two scientists followed her.

"What exactly is a warp field?" Quatermass asked.

The Doctor inwardly sighed. The basic knowledge of warp theory would be appearing on Earth in the next few decades but explaining it now was going to be tricky. "A warp field is one way alien spacecraft can travel at faster than light speeds," she began, but Snell interrupted her.

"Faster than light?" he repeated sharply. "But isn't that impossible?"

"No," the Doctor replied, shaking her head without getting annoyed at Richard's beliefs since at this point many scientists were trying to look at space travel without going off into the realms of science fiction. "It's more common than you think; there are planes of the cosmos which can allow travellers to go anywhere without violating relativity. A warp drive is one of the simplest faster than light systems anywhere in the universe. It creates a bubble around a spacecraft, and this bubble warps and distorts space and time, and some fields have many layers, allowing a larger field which means it will be faster. Once a ship is inside the bubble, it doesn't physically travel in the same way a rocket does, it just rides the bubble like a surfer on a surfboard, and travels to where the ship's computer has been aimed at."

"And the warp field, it can deliver people to other worlds?" Quatermass asked.

"Easily. As I've said, its the easiest faster than light propulsion method there is," the Doctor said. "In fact, its the first one they create before they begin experiments to develop something more powerful and able to take people across a galaxy, or even to other galaxies."

Quatermass felt as if he had just been told something he had only dreamt about but pushed it to the side since he knew it would never happen only to discover it was possible had winded him. "Other galaxies?" he echoed. "There are people out there who can do it?'

"Oh yes. Like I said there are many faster than light methods, and there are several methods of warp drive," the Doctor explained, "For instance, you can use the power of a black hole to fold space and several planes of reality together so you can travel to anywhere you want. You can also use the same principle to twist space together so you can create a tunnel to take you there. But that method is the most simplest," she pointed at the screen.

Richard looked at his friend and saw that he was clearly trying to imagine how such methods could work, but he hurriedly spoke before Quatermass could become too single-minded. "You said that it made sense, Doctor?"

"Did I?" the Doctor asked, looking at Richard in confusion for a moment before she brightened up when she remembered. "Oh, yes. Sorry, my mind is still recovering. But anyway," she went on so she wouldn't have to talk anymore about the regeneration, "when you travel at warp, you can use the space-bending effects of the warp field to hide from radar. That explains why you don't know what happened to your probe. It also explains why the probe didn't avoid the ship in orbit; it just bounced off of the warp field."

The Doctor's expression became grimmer as she looked at the screen. "And its also caused whatever was in orbit to come down as well," she added offhandedly as though she were making a last-minute comment about the weather.

"What?" Quatermass turned back to look at the screen, and he saw for himself the Doctor was right. The probe had struck the alien ship in orbit much like a snooker cue, and now it was coming down somewhere in the atmosphere, and the rippling sphere was clearly trying to right itself.

"What's happening?" Richard asked the Doctor while they saw the alien ship fall deeper and deeper into Earth's atmosphere, seeing she knew more about the technological principles than they did.

"The warp bounce. That ship was right above Earth's atmosphere. It was using its warp field to give it a slower than light drive otherwise it would have been detected in orbit. Whoever these aliens are, they do not want to be discovered. When the probe hit their warp field, it caused it to malfunction and destabilise. That field was the only thing holding it above Earth's gravity," the Doctor explained. "Oh, look," she added, pointing at the screen where they both saw the rippling sphere that depicted the alien ship's warp engines suddenly fading. "Their warp fields have collapsed. There's no way out now."

"Surely they'd have another way of stopping their ship from crashing, Doctor?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I don't know," she replied. "It's possible their ship's engines are purely warp field based and they only have basic engines for getting them out of a planet's atmosphere. I don't know," she repeated with a shrug when she realised she wasn't getting anywhere by speculating. "All I do know is, that ship is going to come down."

"Where?"

The Doctor walked back to the console. "Now that ship's warp engines are collapsed, it will be easy for us to pick it up on radar," she was saying as she examined the controls and on the screen they could see that the ship was actually going to arrive quite close to where they were. "Hmm," the Doctor commented to herself, looking at both the screen and the console thoughtfully. "It seems that ship isn't in dire straits after all."

"What do you mean?"

"It looks like the aliens on that ship shut down their warp field and went on to use a different drive. I was wondering why they didn't do that, but it looks like they must have had problems with their warp drive so they must have decided to just shut it down and come down under a more controlled flight," the Doctor said.

Quatermass was amazed at the implications of the Doctor's statement. _Aliens _were actually going to land on Earth, and they were going to have space technology? Wonderful! "Where will they land?" he asked.

"Not very far from your Rocket base, Professor," the Doctor replied, glancing down on the TARDIS console for emphasis. "I checked with the TARDIS. When it arrives, you'll know it."

Quatermass and Richard shared a look, wondering what she meant by that.

* * *

They had finally managed to stabilise their ship. They'd have a hard time trying to shut their warp core down so they could initialise their sub-light drives, but since the core destabilisation had knocked their ship off balance they'd found it impossible to activate their secondary engines and ion/magnetic thrusters because the computer was diverting so much energy into keeping the warp field going. The core was also backed up with safety systems which only made the process even more difficult.

But they had finally managed to bypass their ships' faster than light drive, and they were still in free fall.

On the bridge, the chief engineer of the expedition to study Earth turned to the leader. "Our engines have been switched to sub-light drive," the engineer reported in a strange, almost sing-song computer voice.

"We are still falling," the leader pointed out in an almost identical voice.

"Yes, Leader," the engineer replied, "the computer diverted too much power from reserves to the warp core. The engines are preventing us from falling to the ground due to gravity."

The leader had only one concern now. "How soon can the warp core be re-activated? We may have been discovered."

"The core must be de-activated and re-started, leader," the engineer replied, no emotion entering the strange voice, "Also we must abandon this ship."

"State reasons."

"The ship is using the inertial dampening system which draws more power from the core. If deactivated, the re-initialisation of the main warp engines will proceed quicker."

The leader considered the options available. Like all of the crew, the leader understood every inch of the ship and how it worked, and the leader knew theirs was the first faster than light ship in their fleet. Their main base needed to be informed of the successes and the failures of the mission for when they wanted to develop the next generation.

In any case, the leader knew theirs was the first ship to be fitted with their type of inertial dampening system and knew it required a lot of energy that was balanced with the artificial gravity systems and the warp core. The leader interfaced with the neural net and saw this was an emergency procedure that had worked on the original test-bed models. It should work.

"Very well. Activate the ejection capsules and prepare for the evacuation," the leader ordered.

The engineer bowed and headed for a console set in a corner while the leader turned to the other members of the crew. Their ship was relatively small, and so there were just six of them among the crew.

"Prepare to abandon ship," the leader ordered, "preset the controls to direct the ship towards the ground for a minimal level of damage."


	4. Chapter 4 Bad Memories

Please let me know what you think.

* * *

Wrong time and Rockets.

"Professor," McCormick, the radar technician said when Bernard was walking into the radar room, followed by Richard, "we're getting a trace of something on radar."

Quatermass glanced meaningfully at Richard before turning back to McCormick. "What is it?" he asked.

"I don't know. It's just appeared," the radar technician replied, his voice turning curious about what was had just appeared. "I was about to shut off the radar for the night and turn in, and then I began tracking this thing. But it didn't just appear on the edge of our radar sector. It appeared here," he pointed at a point close to the centre of the screen.

Quatermass looked thoughtfully at the small radar screen the technician was using. He could see the tiny blip himself. It was quite close to the base. He shared another look with Richard, both of them thinking about what the Doctor had said to them inside the TARDIS. The two scientists had been surprised by the thought of an alien spacecraft being the cause of the probe rocket crash-landing and ruining months and months of data, but they hadn't thought they'd be picking up something this soon.

While the two scientists were both considering the strange coincidence behind this latest turn of events, they had another surprise coming. They saw the blip on the screen _jump _just as the radar tracker passed by.

"What was that?"

"I don't know," McCormick was shaking his head, reaching out a hand to adjust the controls. "It's been happening frequently. I'm going to have this scanner checked out."

Although he bit back the urge to yell the radar technician had no idea what was going on Quatermass also opened to his mouth to tell the technician not to bother, he decided against it for now. Although he wanted to tell McCormick and the others what he and Richard had just learnt, this was not the time. Instead, he thought quickly about what they were going to have to do.

"Wait," McCormick said, "look."

Quatermass looked at the screen, and just in time, he caught sight of the blip coming very close to the Rocket Group base. He turned to Richard. "Get the Doctor here, now," he whispered, knowing that the Doctor was still inside her TARDIS.

"Do you think she might know something we don't?"

"I don't know," Quatermass replied, "but we've only known her for a short time. I want to trust her, but we still don't know why she is here."

Richard frowned as a logical concern crept into his mind. "You don't think…. the Doctor may have had something to do with this?" he asked. "I mean, she did arrive as the probe was crashed. We have just left her in that ship, and now this."

Quatermass sighed. He had no idea what to think, but what made it worse was that despite everything that Richard said, things he did himself acknowledge considering the speed by which it was all happening, he _actually wanted to trust _the Doctor. "I don't know," he repeated. "Get her here now."

Richard nodded and he left the radar room, leaving Quatermass to his own thoughts.

He _did _want to trust the Doctor, and even if she was an alien she wasn't hostile like Victor had turned out to be during that unholy mess with his first experiment with a true space-travelling rocket ship, they still knew little about her. Yes, she had said she was a Time Lady, they knew she came from a planet called Gallifrey, and that she had recently undergone a procedure which made the whole notion of reincarnation real.

But they still didn't know anything about the Doctor. Why was she on Earth? What had caused her to change like that? But what intrigued Quatermass the most was what the Doctor had learnt about him and his career, and a part of him wondered if it would be a good idea if he…

No. It wasn't a wise move. Even if he could persuade the Doctor to tell him what she had learnt about him and his career, Quatermass knew there was a chance he wouldn't like what he learnt. In any case, he had read enough science-fiction, particularly a few time travel novels to get an idea that foreknowledge of the future was not a good move.

Just because the HG Wells book _The Time Machine _had the main character talk about what humanity would evolve into over the centuries did not mean it would be a good idea to do so now in reality, and while some of the ideas about what could happen if one knew anything about their future might be farfetched if he asked the Doctor about them, Quatermass finally realised he didn't want to know.

In any case, the Doctor had found out about him from reading old newspapers and discovering his accomplishments and his failures from those pages, and while it was tempting, he knew nothing about what would happen in reality if he knew beforehand how things would go.

Quatermass decided he was going to get the answers to the questions he wanted, and if that meant confronting the Doctor, then so be it.

Richard came to the radar room with the Doctor behind him. The fact she didn't look too surprised by what they'd picked up on the radar didn't look encouraging.

"Is that-?" Quatermass began.

The Doctor nodded. "How far away is it from where we are?"

McCormick glanced curiously at the Doctor, clearly wondering who she was, but he answered the question. "It's six miles away, bearing East," the radar technician said.

"Get the crash crew ready," Quatermass ordered as he reached the decision to learn more about the aliens who had caused the crash although he wasn't going to tell the others that, and definitely had no qualms about keeping it away from McCormick, at least until he had definitive proof. "Just tell them something else has come down with the crash, and leave it at that."

McCormick's face was a picture of confusion, but he nodded at last. "Alright, Professor," he said and he picked up the phone to put out the call and while he was doing that, Quatermass turned around to the Doctor. "Do you want to come with us, Doctor?" he asked.

The Doctor lifted an eyebrow as she detected the testing nature of that question. She had caught a few looks from Richard, and thanks to her telepathic senses, which were more acute than normal thanks to her post-regenerative state, she could tell both Snell and Quatermass were suspicious of her. But beneath all of that suspicion levelled against _her, _the Time Lady could tell they were more curious about these aliens. In any case, she was just as curious as they were about the aliens.

Still, she smiled at the scientist. "Of course," she replied, though she only hoped whatever Snell and Quatermass had in mind for her was not as gruelling as she was wondering it would be.

* * *

"So," Bernard began a few minutes after he, Richard, and the Doctor got into the van which had been used earlier to inspect the probe crash, only this time Richard was going to be the one driving the van and not someone else which only highlighted in the Doctor's mind these two wanted to speak to her in private since they were the only ones so far who knew about her alien nature after picking up the vibes from Snell earlier, "these aliens… who do you think they are?"

The Doctor gave the question some serious thought but she blew out a breath and shrugged. "I don't have a clue," she replied unhelpfully, "Warp technology is a common faster than light drive; it is used by many races, sometimes for the entirety of the existence of that race because of its simplicity. And it doesn't help that many aliens have been visiting Earth for centuries to explore it, especially since you have developed nuclear power."

"Other races find us interesting?" Quatermass whispered though he wasn't entirely sure why he was saying such a thing. Suddenly he realised he had said that out aloud.

The Doctor chuckled. "Of course. Most alien races start out exploring, even if they are warlike in the long run. But most races have a curiosity, a desire to find out more even if it tends to die down a bit over the years. How else can they find out what's out there? In any case, humanity is an interesting species. Sure, some races are intimidated by your warlike tendencies, but they're still interested. Although, in this galaxy, they need to be careful."

"Why Doctor?" Richard asked, not taking his eyes off of the road as they had to round a bend while he was doing his best wondering if the Doctor was complimenting them or not with that warlike tendencies remark.

The Doctor sighed. "There's an empire out there, ruled by a brutal race of conquerors. For the most part, Earth is protected; their technology is not really advanced compared to other races, which protects them, but they are still dangerous although they occupy a large chunk in another part of the galaxy. But luckily your planet is close to a few peaceful systems who are explorers."

Quatermass wanted to ask more, but something in the Doctor's manner indicated they did not want to know more. Instead, he turned his mind to other things he wanted to know about the Time Lady. "So, Doctor, tell us more about yourself," he began, making Richard roll his eyes, despite how much they wanted to know Bernard wanted to try the 'honey vs vinegar' approach, and he could understand why. Bernard had always gone in for that approach even during his more passionate moments.

"Well, you know I'm a Time Lady," the Doctor began, starting small, "I left my planet in a TARDIS to explore the universe because, well, I was bored and I wanted to explore the universe. There were other reasons I wanted to go, of course, but all my life I'd been told the Time Lord didn't need to explore anything because _we'd _already done it. I didn't see the point since so much more could be learnt, and besides, I never liked getting information secondhand. I wanted to see new worlds, meet new peoples, and watch as the past and the future unfolded around me."

The Doctor's smile faded a little. "And then… it all changed."

"In what way?" Bernard asked, intrigued.

"I didn't leave Gallifrey alone. I left with a young girl, who claimed to be my granddaughter. I checked, and she isn't a member of my family, but I loved her as my own. We left Gallifrey, and after a bit of time travelling to various worlds, we arrived on Earth in the 1960s; we actually used a powerful artefact which damaged the TARDIS a bit, but it worked. Well, I put Susan, which is the name of my granddaughter; it might be human, but it's a nice one, in a local school while I took care of business to repair the TARDIS," the Doctor explained, "and then it all went wrong."

"How?"

"We had been on Earth for a few months. There were a couple of close calls, but Susan found it hard to be discreet with her knowledge, and she attracted the attention of two schoolteachers. To cut a long story short, they followed her back to where we had placed the TARDIS and they forced their way inside when they realised she was inside. They were taken aback about the console room relative to the size of the police box shell," the Doctor said.

"I can't blame them," Richard heard Bernard remark quietly in a whisper.

The Doctor had heard Quatermass's remark as well, but she ignored it. "I panicked. I kidnapped them because at the time I was afraid of what they would say or do, that they would tell the authorities about the TARDIS. So I kidnapped them both," she added as carelessly nonchalant as she could although the memory clearly didn't sit well with her.

"You did WHAT?"

The Doctor winced at the volume. "I'm not deaf, Professor," she said sternly, "And in any case, I recognise my mistakes; I was inexperienced when it came to travelling through time and space. I could have wiped their memories of the event, but by the time it occurred to me it was too late to do anything. I was also arrogant, I know that. I spent two years trying to return them home, without any success. They eventually went back to their home time - more or less, give or take a couple of years to take into account their age - with the help of another time machine. But I stopped kidnapping humans. Once was more than enough."

"Good to hear," Richard muttered sarcastically.

The Doctor glared at him. "I don't do it anymore," she said indignantly, mentally cursing her first incarnations mistakes.

"Alright, Doctor," Quatermass was trying to be patient. "But we just want to know more about you. I mean you just appear when a disaster takes place when we are trying to conduct an experiment. You stumble out of a police box which is actually the disguise of a ship which can travel in time and space, you tell us the research we have dedicated ourselves to has been superseded by many alien races, and you don't tell us about yourself. Just why are you here?"

The Doctor had had enough. She was tired of the never-ending cross-examinations she received everywhere she went in the universe, but at this point, she had to admit Quatermass and Snell had a point.

In the end, she sighed and looked down so she could find the words to describe her predicament.

"Alright, you want to know. I am stuck here, Professor. The Time Lords have exiled me to this planet in this time, even though I told them I wanted to be exiled in the 1960s since I've got friends there who can help me; at this point, they don't even know me because I haven't even met them yet," she said.

She then let it all out.

"I left my home planet about a century or so ago. That was bad enough because not only did I steal my TARDIS, I also went out without permission. I am a renegade, a Time Lord who is against Time Lord society. Back home on my planet, renegades are seen differently; some see us as criminals, particularly since leaving our planet means we will inevitably interfere, others just see us as children rebelling against society."

She looked down at her hands while Richard and Quatermass glanced at each other.

The Doctor was a _criminal? _

At first, both human scientists were concerned for their own safety, worried in case she would react dangerously. However, both human scientists had to admit the Doctor hadn't done anything to warrant that type of fear.

The Doctor carried on. "I told you the TARDIS needed repair, specifically in the navigational and guidance systems. But the fact I didn't know where I was going meant the Time Lords couldn't track me down. Even though it was frustrating at times, I always enjoyed the surprise."

She sighed. "At least until that mess at the War Games planet."

"What?" Quatermass asked, confused.

"The TARDIS took me and my friends who were travelling with me at the time to a planet resembling Earth during the First World War," the Doctor's voice was grim as she explained, not mentioning that a part of her was actually pleased to have the chance to sort out what happened to make her exile happen into linear shape. "It was a very detailed depiction, from the mud-encrusted uniforms of the tired soldiers to the barbed wire and machine-gun posts scattered around. I think I made a mistake, it's hard to remember at this point, but my friends and I were put on trial, but the General in charge was determined to have us killed for some reason I'm still not sure about. Later on, we realised something strange was going on; there were odd mists and soldiers who came from other time periods were appearing, and soon my friends and I went through one of those Barriers and discovered the whole planet seemed to be divided into different time zones. It took a while, but we quickly realised we were not on Earth."

"Where were you?"

"I don't know. I never found out. I don't know how far from Earth we were, or if we were in the Milky Way galaxy or somewhere else" the Doctor replied honestly with a sigh as she played with her hands, mentally wishing for the car to get there quicker; she had always had a love of human cars, knowing that in a few decades vehicles like this would be the equivalent of her TARDIS, even though she didn't like the way they used fossil fuels. Didn't they realise such things like that were finite? What were they going to do when all the oil, coal, and natural gas deposits were exhausted? Were their cars going to just be left to rot in the caustic oxygen-rich atmosphere of Earth?

The Doctor didn't know and didn't care.

The Doctor caught sight of Quatermass' expression as he wondered clearly why she had stopped and she licked her lips. "All my friends and I knew later as we were on another planet, but judging from what we saw… I would not be surprised in the least if we were in some kind of biosphere; an artificial environment closed off from the rest of the planet. That would make sense considering what we saw. There were divided zones separated by time-zones leading to different wars in your planet's history."

"Wait a moment," Richard said as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing though Quatermass was not surprised by his emotional state given the Doctor was going too fast in her explanation. "You were on an alien planet, maybe thousands of _millions of light-years away from Earth, _surrounded by soldiers from different eras?"

"Yes," the Doctor replied simply before she counted off her fingers, "The Boer War. The First World War. The American Civil War. One of the Wars of the Roman Empire. All in all, there were eleven separate time zones. Everything was authentic; the aliens had even sampled Earth's flora and fauna into the illusion to make it more real for the human soldiers. It was like being on a set in Hollywood. Even was so well designed and made, and I have no idea even now just how much work on gone into it, and how much time and effort had been expended. All I know is it was probably a while otherwise there would have been no point."

"What was it all for?"

"The aliens were trying to build an army of invincible warriors," the Doctor explained, "they claimed they wanted to bring order and peace to the galaxy. I didn't believe that for a moment, especially after what I had seen."

Quatermass stared at the Doctor in disbelief. "W-why did they need soldiers from Earth?" he whispered. "Why didn't they just simply create their own army?"

"I wondered that myself when I confronted….," the Doctor paused when her mind caught up with her mouth.

"Who, Doctor?" Quatermass pressed.

The Doctor sighed. "When I confronted another renegade of my people. He had supplied these 'War Lords' with the time travel technology and knowledge. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the one who supplied them with what they needed to create the bio-dome, if that was what they had used, although there's no doubt in my mind though I could be wrong. He didn't tell me why the aliens had gone to so much trouble when they could have found other ways of creating an army."

Quatermass looked at the Doctor aghast with this news. "One of your own people?" he asked, focusing on one part of the Doctor's explanation.

The Doctor saw the scientist's reaction and knew what was going through his mind. These people were making all of this far too simple for her to see what they were thinking. "Not all Time Lords are good, and besides I don't compare you two with the likes of Hitler, do I?"

"We are nothing like that man!" Quatermass snapped while Richard made a sound of agreement. The memories of the last war and the carnage and destruction caused by the Nazi's and the rest of the Axis powers was still fresh in the minds of everyone in this era.

The Doctor inwardly smiled, pleased she had made her point. "You are right, of course, but don't think the worst of me simply because I'm telling you another of my race helped a bunch of warmongering aliens who wanted to control the galaxy."

"Fair point," Quatermass replied grudgingly before he leaned forward. "What happened?"

"I called my people in. Me and my friends had mustered a massive resistance movement and we took control, but I was faced with the problem of getting everyone home. The Time Lord who helped them had provided space-time machines that had a limited life-span and sooner or later they would be rendered useless. My own TARDIS had a faulty navigational circuit, so that was hopeless, and I didn't know where his own TARDIS was hidden. I had no choice but to call in my people to get them to help," the Doctor looked down. "When I did that… I gave them my position. The other Time Lord tried to escape, but he had lost his standing with the aliens, so they shot him. I don't know what's happened to his body; it could have been taken back to my world, or it could have been disposed of. I don't know," the Doctor finished grimly.

"What about these aliens, what happened to them?"

"The Time Lords put their leader on trial. He and three of his guards who had come to rescue him believed they had escaped; the leader believed, wrongly, he had defeated my people. Unfortunately, my people don't fight on the level he and his people knew. We don't need to fight a war," the Doctor said grimly as she remembered what had happened to the War Lord and those three guards who had threatened the trio of Time Lords in the tribunal hall and killed those two technicians before dragging them to the TARDIS although her sympathy for them was rather limited considering just how arrogant the War Lord had been, he had not even _left _Gallifrey yet and he was making plans for more TARDISes to be created, "the Time Lords dematerialised him. It's one of the harshest punishments my people know. If you're sentenced to dematerialisation, your entire history is erased."

Quatermass and Snell shared a look, both of them wondering for a moment the kind of power these Time Lords possessed. That brought Bernard onto another round of questions.

"And…Time Lords… who are you?" he asked, mentally kicking himself for not being able to come up with a better-worded question.

The Doctor blew out a breath as she pondered on the best way to answer that question. Explaining her people was not easy and this was no exception.

"We see ourselves as the Lords of Time. We're one of the oldest, the most mightiest races in the universe," the Doctor began, privately wondering to herself about that last bit since it was the opposite of Time Lord propaganda, but she didn't care since her people had existed alongside some truly unpleasant races. "We created the Time Vortex, a universe-spanning wormhole and imposed a stable timeline onto the universe to prevent the life expectancy of the cosmos from being shortened, and we continue that duty to this day, relatively speaking."

When she was finished the Time Lady knew she was going to get questions, but she wasn't bothered since she needed the conversation to keep herself mentally fit. She was still early in this new body of hers, and she needed a distraction to keep upright and going, though she planned to have a long rest afterwards.

The Doctor was mentally daydreaming about spending time in the TARDIS zero room when Quatermass' voice broke through her thoughts. "Hold on, you said your people imposed a stable _timeline _onto the universe?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes. We didn't become Lords of Time overnight; it took many centuries of trial and error for us to develop to reach that level. My people discovered while the universe can take so much damage - paradoxes resolve themselves mostly, or they are meant to happen in the first place, and some time meddling doesn't cause tremendous long term damage so long as you don't meddle in established events and alter them too much out of sync, or you interfere with moments that are meant to occur. Say you went back in time and killed Hitler shortly after he'd established the Nazi Party. Someone more competent than Hitler would come along, someone who shared the same views but was saner and calmer. Instead of fighting a long scale war, he would perhaps try alternative means of conquest," the Doctor explained, "that is what is called an alternative timeline, and when they appear my people would purge it to prevent its existence or lock it away so it isn't a danger to the universe."

"Why would it be a danger-?"

"The universe is a certain size and there's a certain amount of energy in it. If there are multiple timelines, then they will take up space, and the universe will lose that energy and its lifespan would be drastically changed," the Doctor was inwardly pleased despite the grim voice she had put on during her explanation that some of her knowledge of temporal theory had remained intact, "put it this way; if, _if, _a new landmass appeared, a continent that encompassed Britain, Scotland, Ireland, and a quarter of Europe, what would happen?"

Quatermass and Snell both knew the answer. "There would be earthquakes," Snell whispered, aghast as the image of a new continent ripped its way to the surface, destroying everything. "Britain and Europe would be destroyed."

"Yes, that is what would happen," the Doctor replied, her voice grim and solemn as the same image entered her mind, especially as she remembered one of her old temporal physics classes where her tutors showed her and the rest of her class pictures of alternate timelines causing much the same effect to the universe. "And that is precisely the sort of thing my people want to prevent; I may not like my people after what they've just done by sending me to Earth, but I do admire the fact they have saved thousands of civilisations from their own temporal stupidity, or if an alternative timeline threatened them."

"That can happen?"

"Oh, yes," the Doctor replied.

Snell decided to move the subject along; while this discussion was fascinating and in truth it did make sense if he put his mind to the topic on temporal theory, but there were still some things he wanted to know. "What are we going to do when we arrive at this crashsite, Doctor?"

The Doctor shrugged. Truthfully she had stopped thinking about the possible suspects as the discussion about her people and her past had come up. "I don't know," she answered thoughtfully as she tried to knit her newly regenerated mind back together with plans and counter plans to dealing with this situation; in truth she was amazed she had come out of this regeneration with her brain in good nick especially if the previous incarnation had not been around, relatively speaking, for a long period of time.

But she decided not to dwell on it too much even though she really wished she could just relax. The last thing she needed right now was to collapse due to post-regeneration symptoms.

* * *

Quatermass was delighted when they arrived finally at the crash-site; indeed as they had approached the site, they had seen the fire-engines keeping a safe distance away while searchlights had been erected temporarily in order to help the emergency services pinpoint the ship while they kept away before the Rocket Group and the Army came to examine the scene for themselves.

As they had approached they could see the illuminated spaceship for themselves in a distance. It had guided them, like a ship following the beam of light from a solitary lighthouse.

But even then, Quatermass could see for himself one major detail. This ship was not human. It was alien. It had been constructed by intelligent life. It was here now.

The scientist in Quatermass wanted nothing more than to get rid of all the people surrounding the scene - the sight of the civilians brought mixed feelings for Quatermass; on the one hand he was delighted everyone was sharing this piece of history since so many things could be unlocked for the good of the human race, but on the other he was irrationally angry, though that had more to do with how he felt about the government and their need to cover everything up without thinking about the long term harm - and take the ship back to the Rocket Group where he and his specialists could unlock the secrets to the stars, or develop new branches of research that at the moment were things Quatermass had not even considered.

Bernard knew Richard felt the same way if the eager little sounds he was making under his breath as they pulled in and parked close to the ship while keeping a respectful distance away from the firemen.

Quatermass didn't spare them a thought as he got out, followed closely by Richard, and more sedately by the Doctor. He didn't even spare a thought at all about speaking to anyone here who'd assumed charge of this situation; it never failed to amaze him that some people who felt they were in authority would take charge of a situation while they knew _nothing _and they were simply out of their league.

But Quatermass put them out of his mind.

He had something else on his mind.

It was the Doctor who was on his mind.

After that little lecture the Doctor had given about temporal mechanics - which made sense, if you thought about it a certain way, though Bernard was still confused about how such an ancient and highly advanced civilisation could impose a _single stable timeline _over everything, Bernard had been trying to figure out just what else he could ask the Doctor.

It had led to a truly long, awkward silence - well, awkward for him; he had no idea how the Time Lady really felt about it.

_How do you react when you have someone who can help you realise your long-held dreams of ascending to the stars?_

Alright, granted - Bernard knew the Time Lady wasn't going to give them all of the answers to developing space flight, but if what she said about her exile were true, then she could be here for a while.

Wouldn't it make sense to find out about how space travel worked, really worked, with the aid of an alien?

Bernard had never really considered himself to be that kind of opportunist; he had always considered himself to be the kind of man, the type of scientist who sought out the truth on his own. But he knew the Doctor could help them with so many problems. Bernard was a realist; he knew the Rocket Group would need _years _to pioneer the type of engine needed to get a rocket to the moon, to Mars, and to other planets in space.

But he was torn by the simple problem - would the Doctor help them or not?

"A Cybership," the Time Lady's voice startled Quatermass out of his reverie, and he turned to face her.

"What?" Quatermass asked.

The Doctor breathed in and out gently before she turned to face him grimly. "This is a Cybership. A Mondasian Cybership."

"What's a Cybership?" Richard asked. Quatermass glanced sharply at him, realising that he had been so deep in thought he had failed to pay any attention to anybody who might have been close.

The Doctor ignored the question. The Time Lady was clenching her fists visibly, and her body language was tense. Clearly, whatever this ship was, it meant a good deal to her, and not in a good way. "I can't believe it," she said softly, "I never knew they had come _this _early…."

"Who?" Quatermass asked impatiently, wondering to himself if all aliens were this frustratingly cryptic. "Who are you talking about? Who never came this early, whatever that means-?"

"Cybermen," the Doctor ground out.

"Who are Cybermen?" Richard asked as they walked towards the ship.

The Doctor sighed. That question was rather more broad than most people would imagine. The human race and the Cybermen shared a huge amount in common with one another, as well as a huge number of differences. She needed a moment of study where she examined the outer hull of the ship that towered above her before she felt she could answer the question.

She had recognised the ship from a distance when they'd gotten closer to it, but while the general shape of the Cybership had rung a bell at the back of her mind, she hadn't recognised it at once. But now she was close she remembered the last time she had seen a design like this before. She remembered how she had been half-pulled and half carried to the ship back in the final hours of her first incarnation while the energy influx caused by Mondas draining Earth sapped what little life existed in her first body, but she would never forget the basic shape of the Cybership she'd been taken to, nor would she ever forget the number of silver-snow covered corpses littering the area near where the TARDIS had materialised where Cutler's men had wiped out the next wave of invaders, though she had no idea how the second group to penetrate Snowcap base had gotten in.

She didn't care either, if the Cybermen hadn't turned up then Cutler would have launched the Z-bomb.

"Doctor?" Quatermass' voice broke through her thoughts and she turned to face him.

The rocket scientist was looking at her with open concern. "Are you alright?" he asked, his earlier impatience gone.

The Doctor sighed. "More or less," she answered honestly. "I never thought it would them.."

"Who are they?" Quatermass asked.

"The Cybermen are a hybrid race; part human, part machine," the Time Lady replied. "But their story is far older. They are the remains of a race who lived on Earth's twin planet."

"What?!" Quatermass yelped, drawing confused and worried glances from people nearby, but neither he nor Richard paid any attention to them. This was so unexpected the two scientists wondered how many more revelations they could take.

The Doctor nodded. "Earth had a twin planet. It broke out of orbit millions of years ago; I don't know how it happened, so don't ask, although I have often thought about repairing the TARDIS so I can slip back and see for myself. But in any case, the people of the planet drifted for centuries through space. I don't know what kind of life they had, though I can imagine it was harsh. That was probably bad enough, but then they discovered their race was getting weak," the Doctor explained bleakly as she remembered all of her own past experiences with the Cybermen, "their lifespans were shortening and their bodies were becoming frailer. In order to survive, they began experimenting with augmenting their existing bodies with cybernetic and bionic prosthetics until they reached a point where virtually everything in their bodies could be replaced, and then they augmented their _brains _to remove all emotion because they probably couldn't cope with what they had done to themselves."

"Oh, my God," Quatermass whispered as he tried to imagine the type of minds who'd considered that as a solution to their problems, and found he couldn't. "And this is one of their ships?" he added, though he felt stupid for pointing out the obvious.

The Doctor nodded and took a step closer to the ship. "I never knew Mondas had developed a ship that could travel faster than light," she commented, her eyes expertly scanning the hull. "Mondas is getting closer."

"Closer? You mean it's coming back?"

"I think I've heard somewhere Mondas had been fitted with some kind of propulsion engine, probably an electro-magnetic field of awesome power," the Doctor remarked, seemingly not hearing the question. "It will take years for the planet to return. But it will return. Believe me, I know - I was there."

The two scientists were quiet as the Doctor spoke. "I saw it; the invasion of the Cybermen. It started when Mondas drew closer and closer to the Earth, draining the energy because the Cybermen had exhausted their planet's resources. They sent their warriors to Earth in ships like this one," she gestured to the ship towering above them, "only it didn't work. The Cybermen had triggered a drain of energy they could not control. They absorbed too much and they were defeated. But the disease that is the Cybermen survived. Some of them escaped from Mondas, seeding themselves on dozens of worlds, inspiring them to take up cybernetics in order for the Cybermen to survive. In the future, other races will be inspired to go down the same route, but nine times out of twelve, they will just repeat Mondas's mistakes…and one of their ships is on Earth," the Doctor added, turning to the two scientists, "right now."

* * *

Author's note - I always had my theories about the planet the War Lords used for their Games. The idea of a near closed off environment makes sense since a lot of the place had plants from Earth. Okay, so it's possible it was terraformed but I'm going with my idea since the War Lords had remarkable control over it and they would need power for the Time Barrier technology. But even the Doctor is unsure, so there is that.


	5. Chapter 5 Inside the Cybership

Let me know what you think.

* * *

Wrong Time and Rockets.

"So," Quatermass began hesitantly as he looked up at the towering form of the Cybership, "how long do we need to wait before the outer hull is cool enough for us to get inside?"

"It shouldn't take too long. The last time I encountered _this _particular branch of the Cyber-race, the Cybermen had spaceships which were capable of entering and leaving the atmosphere of a planet without any heat problems on their hulls. They even took me inside one, but I...was really not in a good way when I was taken, so my memory isn't brilliant when I think back about the encounter," the Doctor replied as she stood leaning against one of the Rocket Group cars. "It should be cool soon enough now."

Quatermass studied the Doctor for a moment, seeing how the Time Lady was leaning against the car. Although she was truly trying to appear like nothing was wrong, she still resembled a woman on the verge of falling asleep.

"Do you need to rest, Doctor?" he asked worriedly.

The Doctor waved a hand. "I'll be alright," she replied weakly. "It's just post-regeneration jitters. I'll be alright."

She was lying.

When she had been woken up from her sleep after she had arrived, the Doctor had been keeping herself going by relying on the people around her to occupy her time. But the conversation inside the car had died down and the usual post-regeneration nausea had come back with a vengeance. Even the unwelcome return of her old enemies wasn't doing anything for her since she couldn't get inside the Cybership itself. She knew if she walked inside the ship in her current state then she would be able to concentrate her mind, but just standing out here waiting for these idiots to get on with their work was frustrating.

The Doctor and the rest of the Rocket Group had been out here for close to an hour already while a small group of scientists were checking over the outer-hull of the ship with Geiger counters and Rassilon knew what else. All the Doctor wanted was to get this over and done with so then she would be able to get some rest.

_Cybermen, _the Doctor thought to herself, _of all the races it had to be them. _

Just as her first incarnation had encountered the Daleks and the Monk, her previous incarnation had encountered the Ice Warriors, the Daleks, and the Cybermen, but with the Cybermen she had encountered them more frequently back when she had been travelling with Ben, Polly, James, Zoe and Victoria.

But this was somehow new… and yet as the Doctor continued to think about this, the more it made sense the Cybermen would send scouting parties as Mondas drifted closer and closer to Earth, but this was the first time she had heard about it. It was logical for the Cybermen to send out expeditions to scout out Earth and send the details back to their mother planet so the Cybermen were prepared, but she wondered how many times they had done this. She doubted very much the Cybermen had not just sent this one ship off. The problem was there was nothing she could do about it. The encounter and the subsequent encounter with Mondas was a fixed event in the Web of Time.

The destruction of the Cybermen's home planet had given rise to new civilisations, and it had also been the basis on which many species had built interstellar empires or communities. There was nothing she could do. And besides the event was an important turning point in her own past, and changing her own personal history was, sadly, fixed because she could think of a few things she would very much like to change...

Quatermass licked his lip and bit down softly on the flesh. He could tell the Doctor was lying, but it as just as clear to him the alien was determined to appear strong by standing though he didn't know whether that w_as foolishness or just stubbornness. _"Perhaps you should get some rest, Doctor," he suggested practically, but the Doctor shook her head.

'No," she replied breathlessly. "If I get some rest now, then I will be liable to sleep for a very long time. I should be alright for another few hours."

"Tell us some more about these Cybermen," Snell said when he realised his friend wasn't getting anywhere, and likewise the Doctor simply refused to get any rest though only God knew what was going on in her body right now.

The Doctor sighed. "I've practically told you about them already," she replied.

"Well, why do they want to come to Earth in the first place?" Snell pressed.

"The Cybermen have always been a race on the decline," the Doctor said, wondering if Snell was merely asking these questions which she had already summarised earlier to keep her upright and thinking. If that was true then she would be eternally grateful to him, "they need new supplies of human beings so they can covert them into new Cybermen. That was one of the things the Cybermen of Mondas wanted the most when they returned; they wanted the human race that was on Earth. I told you, I was there. I saw the Cybermen arrive, but I also saw them die. But," she pointed at the ship thoughtfully, "this is the first time I've encountered this particular group of Cybermen with a Faster than Light ship before."

"You didn't think they'd have one?"

"Actually, I never gave it much thought," the Doctor admitted, "but I suppose it's logical the Cybermen would send scouting groups ahead to see if Earth was right for them to conquer."

Quatermass swallowed, memories of the experimental rocket he had launched entering his mind, haunting him. The thought of another alien race coming to Earth to conquer it frightening him. "Why, why do they need to conquer us?" he demanded as his emotions got the better of him.

"Didn't you hear me earlier? The Cybermen _lost _their ability to reproduce naturally, so now whenever they find a compatible species, they are instantly marked down for cyber-conversion, the process which transforms individuals into Cybermen," the Doctor replied grimly while trying to ignore the nausea she was feeling. She hoped this check was done quickly. She needed a rest. She could barely remember how her first regeneration had gone, but even then her second self had some rest. "The process is extremely delicate, no matter which race pioneers it, though many of them who do are simply basing it on Mondas's own methods and even then they are fairly primitive. Each and every time the Cybermen try to convert beings from different races, it fails. When the Cybermen try to conquer a species that is compatible, they do it very carefully without going in guns blazing. They use subterfuge mostly to gather the right numbers of people for conversion. And Mondasians and humans are genetically related, and the Cybermen know it."

The Doctor was about to go on when someone hurried over to them. "Professor, the outer hull is cool. We've found the hatch and we're ready to go in."

"That's a bad idea," the Doctor interrupted quickly, making the three men look at her curiously for her sudden interruption. "Let me go in first with Professor Quatermass to see if there are any security measures on the ship we can disable. At the same time, the Professor can see for himself the layout of the ship to determine if its stable."

"Who are you?" the man asked.

"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor replied briskly and strode forward with Quatermass while she pulled the rocket scientist with her. "Come on Professor," she said without giving him a chance to argue. She whispered fiercely at him before he could ask what she was doing, "Cybermen always lay booby traps on their facilities in case of a failure. Many of them are lethal; I once travelled to a planet where there was a Cyber-complex; the _doors _were electrified and incinerated two people. I don't know if the Mondasians did that, but it's still possible. I know what I'm looking for, but with you, there's a bit of credibility."

Quatermass nodded, intimidated into silence by the Doctor's story.

* * *

While everyone was distracted by the Doctor and Professor Quatermass walking into the ship through the hatchway - Quatermass telling the others to give him and the Doctor time to examine the interior while Snell was given instructions to make certain no-body tried to follow - one person broke away and headed over to a car.

Once he was seated on the driver's seat he took out a hidden radio. He had a call to make.

* * *

Professor Quatermass had been nervous when he had heard about the traps the Cybermen had probably laced into their ship, but all thoughts of vigilance went out of the window - or through at the hatch, as the case may have been - when he stepped through into the Cybermen's ship.

The first thing that caught his attention was the fact it was well lit - not brightly, but well lit - and he looked around for the source of the light. When he couldn't find any he turned to the Doctor.

"Why is it so well lit up in here?" he asked.

"Emergency luminescent panels," the Doctor replied briefly as she took out of her pocket her sonic screwdriver with a sigh of relief at the sight of the tool she had been using since that nasty business with the - what was it that eventually caused Victoria to leave? The Doctor immediately clamped down on those thoughts; thinking about Victoria was too painful, especially since the Doctor had never once tried to ensure the TARDIS travelled to more peaceful places where Victoria could relax.

But thinking about her companions brought back other, more recent memories to mind; Serena's death, Jamie and Zoe leaving…

The Doctor held up the sonic screwdriver and twisted the setting wheel for scanning mode before she turned it on.

Bernard looked with interest as the Doctor held up the small penlight-like device and ran it over the entranceway of the Cyber-ship. "What is that?" he asked.

"It's called a sonic screwdriver," the Doctor answered as she completed the scan very quickly, though she was very distracted as she made sure to scan one particular part of the entranceway more than once to be sure; the sonic screwdriver she was using was one of the more basic models, and there were many other designs of variants within the TARDIS computer, but regardless this was a standard model with the standard functions and features. "It vibrates quantum strings with sonic waves. It can unlock and lock up doors, scan technology, all sorts of things…"

The Doctor went silent as she continued to examine the Cybership. So far the screwdriver hadn't picked up any signs of any kind of booby-trap, but she knew better than to underestimate the Cybermen. Their version of logic was brutal, machine-driven. But it was still logic. The Cybermen must have realised there was a possibility of their ship being damaged, causing it to crash where humans, with their never-ending stupidity, would examine the ship.

The logical thing to do would be to booby-trap their ship.

Suddenly her screwdrivers' chirps changed. They became harsher, irregular. The Doctor and Quatermass paused, the Time Lady because she was trying to maintain her cool while Quatermass went very very quiet as he realised something very bad was nearby. The Doctor ran her screwdriver over a far wall, and she went still.

"I was right," she whispered, but she clearly didn't take pride in being right. "They did booby trap the ship."

With a sigh, she slowly ran the screwdriver down the wall and she paused. "There it is."

"Where is what?" Quatermass demanded.

"There," the Doctor pointed on the wall. Quatermass followed her finger to a point where she was pointing, and he saw, almost invisible since no-one would notice it since they would be focusing on the rest of the ship, a little black circle that was currently blazing a soft red light.

"What is it?"

"A sensor. Really basic and simple; you pass through it, don't notice it, and this panel in the wall," the Doctor pointed and Quatermass spotted a small panel built into the wall right where the Doctor had pointed out, "and Cybermats start to come out."

"Cybermats, what are they?"

"The Cybermen don't just convert humans or aliens that are genetically compatible with their process," the Doctor replied grimly, "they take the brains of simple animals such as dogs or cats, though they sometimes use…babies and they stick them into cybernetic bodies. Cybermats resemble silvery earthworms or slugs, but they're very dangerous. They can inject poison, or they have other ways of killing."

Quatermass was looking at the panel feeling sick to his stomach. He was focusing on just one thing in the Doctor's explanation. "They take the brains out of _babies?" _he whispered aghast.

"Yes. I think we'd better get on," the Doctor said when she saw Quatermass's expression.

The two went down more corridors before the Doctor stopped at another door. Quatermass heard the Time Lady take a deep breath and open it, and he caught sight of her expression of dread and realised she didn't want to be here but she still opened the door anyway. The room was very small but it was dominated by three small alcoves with heavy barred doors attached.

"Is this a…brig?" Quatermass asked hesitantly; everything about this place yelled that it was some kind of prison though he had no way of being sure.

The Doctor nodded. "Yes," she said softly looking around the room as if haunted by long-ago memories.

Quatermass didn't see it on the Time Lady's face. He had just noticed something about the cells. "They don't look as though they're meant to take many prisoners," he commented when he saw the metal or plastic bench built into the alcoves. "How are you meant to walk around in a cell-like that?"

"You're not. The Cybermen are aware that prisoners can escape, so they came up with a simple way of keeping prisoners restrained. It's a similar principle to being clapped in irons on board a naval ship of the 1800s; the Cybermen take the hands of their prisoner, and they stick them through this hoop," the Doctor pointed at a large, heavy-looking metal hoop on the top of the barred door that Quatermass had noticed but had dismissed as unimportant, "and this lever here, "she pointed at a silver lever on the side of the door, "locks the hands into place. No movement. No way of finding a means out."

Quatermass stared at the Doctor curiously. "You sound like you've been through it before," he commented.

"I have. I told you how I saw Mondas be destroyed, well I didn't tell you I gave the Cybermen only a small amount of trouble. I was close to my first regeneration, and I spent the best part of that mess unconscious because I was trying to hold it back. I spent a few hours in a cell just like this with a friend of mine," the Doctor shrugged it off as though it wasn't a major deal before she brightened up, "Come along, Professor. There's still a great deal to see."

As they walked through the ship Quatermass was looking around the corridors at a sedate pace while he watched the Doctor use her sonic screwdriver to scan the corridors for any sign of any booby-traps. The rocket scientist noticed that the screwdriver changed notes a few times, but the Doctor always disabled the traps. Quatermass decided he didn't want to know what the traps were, especially after hearing about the Cybermats. Finally, he and the Doctor arrived at another room which was substantially bigger than the brig.

The room was dominated by two metal benches that put Quatermass in mind of a dental surgical chair where the dentist examined the teeth of a patient before deciding on the best way of yanking it out, but this version was made of cold steel and it had solid-looking metal restraints. At the very head of the bench, neatly folded away was some kind of black ring containing a number of vicious-looking surgical instruments.

There was a swish of the Doctor's baggy, shapeless frock coat and Quatermass was broken out of the spell he was under, and he noticed the other features of the room. There were a number of metal plates running vertically down the sidewall and there were metal restraints designed to lock people against them. On the other wall were a series of alcoves the size of a small wardrobe, crammed full of the electronic circuitry of a kind Quatermass had ever seen.

Tucked out of sight in a corner that he would've missed had the Doctor not gone over to it was a small desk with a massive stool. But overall the place was like a futuristic if sinister, hospital surgery.

And then he realised what this place was.

"This is where humans are turned into Cybermen, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes," the Doctor answered, distracted with the desk.

Quatermass, sensing the Doctor's interest, went over to have a look at the desk as well. "What is it?"

The Doctor was currently examining the desk and she was stabbing a series of controls. A display appeared suddenly, making Quatermass jump back in shock however the Doctor was too busy reading what was on display to care. She breathed in and out deeply before she stood back. "Well, at least that confirms why the Cybermen are here," she said.

"I'm glad you do."

The Doctor ignored him. "The Cybermen are certainly here to study Earth. They've been here for a while. They were tasked to determine if Earth was advanced enough to stop them and if humans were genetically compatible. They converted ten people as part of an experiment to determine the right means of converting humans. The results were logged in this computer, and they were transmitted to Mondas where it will be studied soon."

Quatermass felt sick as he mentally conjured an image of a room much like this full of humans ranging from the old to the very young, watching as other people were forced to become more machine than human. "Is there nothing we can do?" he asked.

"No," the Doctor shook her head grimly, wondering how she could tell the human scientist what was happening was meant to happen. She decided to just go for it. "Mondas is a fixed point in history. When they brought their planet here, the Cybermen were destroyed. They came back to Earth with knowledge of how to convert humans into creatures like themselves. In any case, the information has already been transmitted. There's nothing more we can do."

The Doctor looked around the conversion room before she let out a deep sigh before she quietly led the way out, and she heard Professor Quatermass follow her, the haste in his footsteps telling her how he was more than happy to get out of there. The Doctor couldn't say she blamed him since Cyber-conversion facilities were yet another example of how desperate the Cybermen were.

She had never really told anybody before, not even Jamie, the only human companion she'd had who'd experienced as many encounters with the Cybermen as many times as she had herself, that she'd always pitied the Cybermen even though she hated them at the same time. There was just something about them that put her mind on edge, their coldly machine-like minds, their brand of brutal logic and the way they destroyed everything in their path because they were trying to survive.

In a way the Cybermen were worse than the Daleks, however, the Doctor was truly uncertain if she should prefer the Cybermen to the Daleks since their motives were much more straightforward and more realistic than those of the Daleks.

The Daleks with their obsession and their hatred for anything in the universe that was nothing like them were predictable, but the Cybermen due to the fact there were so few of them at any given time needed to expend resources on being extremely careful so when it was time for their armies to be used they would attack with terrible force.

All the Cybermen wanted was to survive. As that Cyberleader who had been shoved into a debate/argument with Polly shortly before her first regeneration had stated they were only interested in survival. Yes, the Cybermen were willing to go to war, but only so long as the Cybermen benefited from it in the long run.

That Cyber-war where Voga was deliberately targeted was a primary example. The Cybermen were fighting against humanity, or rather a small band of humans who they hoped they could convert. When humanity discovered the weakness the Cybermen had towards gold, well the Cybermen were very quickly wiped out though the Doctor had heard rumours and stories that she believed were true some Cybermen from that war had survived and fled to different parts of the universe to ensure their own survival though not before Voga itself was attacked.

But she had always pitied the Mondasians. The Doctor was not blind. She knew enough about their history to know some of their technology was beneficial if it was used properly, but the people of Mondas had taken it too far and even secure inside the armoured suits the Cybermen had worked out for themselves with no way to reproduce properly they would need to find the right numbers of a certain type of people, and the Cyber-race would survive…

_Hold on, _she thought to herself while she scanned the corridors for any more traps, noting silently the solid metal poles screwed into the walls while Quatermass followed behind her quietly, _just a minute… What in Omega's name is that?_

The Doctor stopped as she came to a large alcove that looked like it something had been installed there. The Doctor hesitantly stepped forward and walked into the alcove before she looked up when she felt a draft and she found herself looking into the open sky above.

"What is it, Doctor?" Quatermass asked before he hesitantly stepped forward himself and found himself in the open air. "What is this?"

The Doctor licked her lip as she stared up at the sky. "There was some kind of escape pod in this room, Professor," she whispered, feeling sick. "The Cybermen survived the crash."

* * *

A few miles away from the crash site of the Cyber-ship, a large sphere landed on the ground with a large helicopter-rotor on the top while on the side were much smaller rotors designed for steering. The sphere had begun its slow descent towards the ground before the rotor finally stopped and came to a halt.

The hatch in the side of the Cyber-escape pod opened slowly and the six Cybermen who had been crewing the ship climbed out slowly while they maintained a close hold on their weapons mounted underneath their chest units while they cautiously scanned the landscape with their infrared scanners while they took up a defensive posture.

When they were convinced they had landed unnoticed, the Cyber-leader turned to his subordinates. "How far is our ship?"

The Cyber-engineer calmly adjusted a control on his accordion-like chest unit. An electronic beeping started up before it reached a slow hum. "It is six miles away, Leader," he said and he pointed in a single direction.

The Cyber-leader nodded. "Very well. How long will the engines and the computer take for reactivation?"

"I set the computer to reactivate the engines as soon as we had left. They should be in standby mode now. We can reactivate our ship when we arrive."

"Excellent. We shall return to our ship now."

"The escape pod has lost power in the energy cell. We shall have to walk."

"Irrelevant. The pod has served its purpose."

"Leader," one of the Cybermen began, "we may encounter humans."

"Also irrelevant. If we encounter any humans then we shall deal with them."

* * *

The Doctor stood to the side as Professor Quatermass' team examined the control room of the Cyber-ship. The room was essentially just a large circle at the top of the ship with a number of consoles and displays built into the walls with padded metallo-plastic chairs that looked strange to the humans, but the Doctor had no problem recognising gravity-shield chairs when she saw them.

She had told Bernard earlier that the Cyber-ship got its artificial gravity from the acceleration of the ship, but the gravity chairs and the poles in other parts of the ship were meant to help them stabilise themselves in case they couldn't handle it. The chairs were also designed to shield them from the effects of particularly hard acceleration. All of the Cybermen she had encountered so far had always had a weakness for gravity, so it didn't surprise her.

But she wasn't concerned with the details at the moment. She had a lot more on her mind than the functions of the Cyber-ship.

The Doctor was more worried about the Cybermen who had escaped.


	6. Chapter 6 Mind Control

Please let me know what you think.

* * *

Wrong Time and Rockets.

Major Pike was listening to a voice over the RT. "_Professor Quatermass and this woman called 'the Doctor' went inside the alien ship that's come down a quarter of an hour ago. Apparently this 'Doctor' wanted to make sure there were no 'traps' inside the ship."_

Pike frowned even though he was privately sceptical about the notion of alien life. He decided to push that out of his mind for the time being even though he wanted to claim the ship was human-built and had crashed in Britain. "Did she say anything about the traps?" he asked.

He mentally commended individuals who were vigilant, but how would this strange woman know anything about this, unless she knew about it beforehand? Was she a spy, or was she someone well played in the government who was looking into this matter, and he hadn't been told? It wouldn't be the first time that type of thing had happened, and it was a nightmare and a headache every time.

Pike had to focus his attention on the RT when the operative who was monitoring the British Rocket Group came back on the air - he would think about the Doctor later and come up with plans and counter-plans to make sure nothing blew up in his face.

"_No. Neither did the professor. But whatever they are, they must be formidable since he personally stressed everyone was to be careful, and if they saw something they were unsure of then they were to tell either himself or the Doctor."_

Again with this Doctor, but still Pike couldn't blame the operative for that since he was making a report. "Have you been inside the ship?" he asked.

"_No, but the professor is getting teams ready to explore the ship. Oh, and I also heard the professor speaking to Snell, I heard him use the word "Cybermen."'_

"Cybermen? What's that?" Pike relayed, wondering what that meant. It sounded silly, somehow. If he was trying to name a spy group to spread false rumours, he would have probably picked something like that, or maybe something a bit more imaginative.

"_No idea."_

Pike sighed while he thought about what he had just heard. He was not happy the scientists had gotten inside the ship since it would mean they could take small pieces of technology, and his orders had been to gather the _whole _of the ship for study by the boffins. That meant every last nut and bolt. But there was nothing that could be done about that now, and so Pike decided to let it go for a while; he would let the scientists spend some time tinkering over the new toy. When he arrived he would ransack the entire area to make sure they had taken nothing, and then it would be taken into custody, where it belonged.

"Try to learn what you can about the ship and about these _Cybermen," _Pike ordered over the RT set, privately wondering if the name was some kind of codeword or something, "and try to find out as much as you can about this Doctor. We should be at the crash in-," he glanced at the driver sitting next to him while in the back of the truck were a platoon of soldiers who would be securing the scene. From there Pike would make arrangements to have the ship picked up and have it removed but to do that they would need to take notes of the size of the machine.

The driver read the message. "Two hours," he replied.

Pike relayed that. "Oh, one last thing. Try to determine the size of the ship," he remembered. He wanted this particular chore over and done with very quickly so then he could impress his superiors with his efficiency although he had no real intention of waiting for hours and hours for a pickup crew to arrive.

"_Understood. See you in two hours. Over and out."_

Pike turned off the radio and sat back in his seat while he rubbed his bare chin thoughtfully. He had not really wanted this assignment in the first place, believing to be nothing more than a mundane recovery mission of a downed aircraft or something, though the thought of it being foreign certainly added an exciting element.

And then it had been spoiled by the news the aircraft was not an aircraft, but some kind of spaceship. Pike had considered the news to be nonsense of course since aliens did not exist, except in some of those really tacky movies and in novels. But orders were orders, and Pike would follow his orders to the letter. He had fought with distinction during the war, although he had only seen action in the final days of the war. Thinking about the war made Pike close his eyes. It was times like this he wished he was still fighting; at least fighting in France against the SS and the rest of the German army had been simple, but the last few years had been nothing but one mundane mission after another.

Still, he would follow his orders.

As the truck travelled down the road, Pike was going through his mind everything he had heard with the last report. He wasn't surprised the scientists of the British Rocket Group were already poking their noses into the crash although he wasn't happy about it, he would let them have their fun for the time being, but as he thought through everything he had heard over the RT, he was once more mystified about the mention of the Doctor.

_Did the government already send someone to the crash before me, or was she already with the professor to make sure he went there? _Pike thought to himself, admitting to himself that it was a possibility. But if the government was involved then they must have been able to see the future since the Doctor seemed to have a great deal of knowledge about this ship-

"SIR!" the driver yelled in surprise, and Pike was jolted out of his thoughts when he saw three weird silver figures appear, causing the truck to swerve off of the road before he managed to get some control back.

Pike was about to get out and confront the figures when the doors of the truck were wrenched open and one of the massive silver figures was suddenly right there in his face and a quick glance behind showed the driver was also confronted with a figure of his own. For a moment Pike wondered what was happening with his men, but the answer of screaming in the back before it was silenced made him reach out for his weapon, but the figure's right hand grabbed the barrel of the revolver and threw it outside behind it quickly before he could even use it.

Shocked by the strength and speed of the snatch, Pike gaped in shock at the weird appearance of the figure, taking in the sightless black eyes and the silver-grey cloth-like mask stretched over the head topped with two handlebars which met in the middle where they joined in a circular lamp-like thing. Pike could only see the head of the figure.

"You are travelling in the direction of our ship, are you not?" the figure asked.

Pike blinked in surprise when he heard the voice of the figure. It sounded like a weird musical instrument that rose in pitch and then fell, almost in a sing-song way, but after feeling a touch of the strength of the figure he knew this thing was not likely to sing "Row-Row-Row-Your Boat" at him.

"I don't know what you are talking about-!"

"Illogical. We have already scanned your primitive radio transmissions. We know that a group of scientists from the organisation known as the British Rocket Group have already our ship. We are also aware a military detachment has been despatched."

Pike grimaced. "You seem to know more about our mission than we do," he snapped. "Why ask?"

The figure ignored the question. "You will take us to our ship at once.

Pike studied the two giant, tall silver figures curiously. By now he had remembered the RT call he had received concerning the crash and he remembered something their agent there told him about it. "You're the Cybermen?" he said hesitantly, looking over the figures and wondered if they were foreign spies playing dress-up for some strange reason.

But he knew deep down they weren't. This was no fancy dress party. This was really happening.

"Yes. We are known as the Cybermen," the Cyberman replied, and a soft blue beam of light suddenly shot from the lamp-thing on the top of its head into Pike's eyes. Pike screamed in sudden shock and he heard the driver let out a similar scream before they both went silent as quickly as it had happened and both men looked at the Cybermen with emotionless faces.

Satisfied when the mental control took hold, the Cyberleader climbed out of the cab. "Come out of there," he ordered.

Both Pike and the driver obeyed, and the Cyberleader turned to its other subordinates. "Bring the other soldiers out."

When all the soldiers were lined up against the truck, the Cyberleader took a moment to study them all and saw the mental control over the soldiers. Each member of the platoon was looking ahead with cold, set, expressionless faces. There was no emotion in their expressions. They were all completely under the control of the Cybermen.

"You will take us to the ship," the Cyberleader began when he was satisfied the control was stable and was holding properly. "Obey at all times."

* * *

Despite her concerns with the letting humans walking around the Cyber-ship - the technology of the ship was so far ahead of where they were currently although she knew it was only a short gap, but it wasn't too short for them to make a mistake and blow themselves to pieces - the Doctor couldn't help but enjoy herself but it was marred by the knowledge the Cybermen were still out there.

Yes, she had managed to deactivate all of the traps on the ship so then none of them would be triggered by any of the humans; if there was one thing she had always loved, it was showing off her knowledge of technology, but as she led Bernard and Richard and a few other scientists through the ship, the Doctor couldn't help but worry about the Cybermen who'd escaped during the landing.

She knew the Cybermen would try to return to their ship if they already weren't on their way back. Cybermen were always predictable. It had to do with their brutal machine-like logic geared for survival, they knew if they lost their ship they could never return to Mondas. They were going to come back to their ship.

In the meantime, she had plenty of time to think and just as much time to prepare for a defence against the Cybermen since she knew they would be on their way back and then blasting off again to return to their dying planet. The good thing was she had told Quatermass and Snell about the danger, and now they were checking out the rest of the ship.

"What is this place, Doctor?" Quatermass asked as they came to a massive heavy sliding door. He was worried about what the Doctor had told him of course, but he wondered why the Time Lady was leading them around like this. The thought she was only doing it to show off the ship to them did cross his mind, but the scientist was still not sure what made the Time Lady tick.

Snell lifted the issue geiger counter he was holding. It began to click. "There's definitely radiation here," he said, looking pointedly between the Time Lady and his friend. They could not stay here long.

The Doctor pressed a control on the side of the door and it began to open. "There's no need to worry," she said reassuringly. "Early models of Cybermen are vulnerable to radiation. When they built this thing, they knew what they were doing. They would have kept the radiation heavily shielded. We'll be alright."

_That's good to know, _Quatermass thought to himself dryly while fears of what would happen to their bodies if exposed to too much radiation ran amok through his mind, but his eyes widened in amazement as the door slid back and he found himself looking at a massive collection of machinery around in wheel shape with spokes going outwards. Each spoke was filled with piping and conduits, laced with electronic technology that Quatermass couldn't even grasp. Dominating the room was a massive metallic cylinder pointing vertically downwards into a cavity in the ground.

Quatermass and Snell jumped when the Doctor let out a loud exclamation. "So that's how they did it!" she cried.

The two human scientists looked at the Doctor, both surprised by her yell, but she was ignoring them as she looked at the room with awe on her face, though very quickly that awe disappeared when she snorted with something very much like contempt. "Oh, yes, that's right, ruin it for everyone!" the Doctor sneered.

"Doctor?" Quatermass said, wishing the Time Lady wouldn't keep going off on tangents like this; the more time he spent around the Time Lady, the more he wondered what her mental state was since she didn't seem to be aware of a lot most of the time.

The Doctor sighed and she turned to him. "I've been trying for the last few hours to work out how the Cybermen managed to build a warp drive. Now I know," she shook her head, "I should have realised they would have found this."

"Doctor," Snell said in a voice that said he was being phenomenally patient with the Time Lady, "will you please tell us what's wrong?"

"As I've just said, I was wondering how the Cybermen constructed a warp drive. Don't you remember what I told you in the TARDIS before we came here, that there were many other forms of warp drive since its one of the most common forms of interstellar propulsion out there? It's easy to construct a warp engine when you've got the right resources and the right knowledge for constructing the engines, but on a planet that's constantly moving through space, it's not so simple," the Doctor nodded around the room, "I'd already thought the Cybermen had used a gravitational warp drive, which would be right up there with their current abilities, but they haven't. Instead, they've harnessed tachyons to create a warp drive."

"Tachyons, what are they?" Quatermass asked, thinking _another thing we don't yet know. _

The Doctor glanced at him for a moment before she walked around the room slowly to examine the technology around them. Both Snell and Quatermass noticed the Doctor was just looking, she didn't touch anything with either her fingers nor did she take out her sonic screwdriver. "They haven't been theorised yet by human science," the Doctor began, "but they will be soon, though the tricky part will be discovering them because although your technology and your methods for detecting particles will improve over the next century.

"How do the Cybermen use the tachyons to power their ship?" Snell asked curiously.

"Tachyons are particles that are slightly out of phase with the rest of the universe," the Doctor explained, "they travel faster than the speed of light. But if you can harness natural ones, or if you create artificial ones, then you can enter a phased state and travel faster than light. But this ship uses the tachyons to create a vortex in space and time, and it travels faster than light because the vortex _warps _space."

Quatermass looked around the room, at the bizarre alien technology around him. The Doctor could literally hear what he was thinking; _With this technology….maybe after a few years of research, and a few experiments to make sure we've got it all…we can leave our solar system and travel beyond the stars…._

The Doctor was in two minds about that; on the one side it would take decades for humanity to develop an even _basic _understanding of the physics of the technology around them, so the Laws of Time would not be broken. But the Laws of Time were what was on the other side, and the Doctor wondered if it would be a good idea if she allowed them any access to this ship at all.

"Why were you disappointed the Cybermen were using tachyons instead of gravitational fields?" Snell asked while the Doctor was distracted with her indecision regarding the ship and what she should do.

"I knew the Cybermen didn't have the scientific knowledge of the means of building a space drive capable of warping space more efficiently, but there were still a number of possibilities. I thought they would go for a gravitational field because it's one of the more simpler ones, but at the same time I remembered these Cybermen and gravity didn't go together," the Doctor replied with an indifferent shrug as though it wasn't a problem for her anymore. "Alright, I admit it; I got carried away. I had so many other possibilities going through my mind it never occurred to me to think of tachyons. If I had and I hadn't yet seen anything like this, I would dismiss it; it takes a highly advanced civilisation to detect tachyons, and while the Cybermen are advanced it would have been too difficult for them to do anything with them."

"That doesn't seem like you," Quatermass observed.

The Doctor frowned at him. "What do you mean?" she asked curiously.

"I just mean that you don't seem like the type to dismiss something like that about a species," Quatermass said quickly as if he were worried the Doctor would shout at him for his comment. But the Time Lady took it rather well.

Fortunately for the rocket scientist, the Doctor wasn't offended, she understood what the scientist was saying. "No, but you have to understand the state Mondas is in right now; when the planet was blasted out of orbit, they must have exhausted the planet's resources just to survive. When the Cybermen were created, they drew their power from their home planet. Now they are nearly back in their old solar system, there can't be that much energy left. With that kind of environment, the Cybermen wouldn't have had the resources to create a more energy-intensive warp engine."

"There are other designs?" Bernard asked in surprise although he guessed he shouldn't have been too surprised.

"Of course. The most common is the use of a black hole powered warp drive; that's easy to build. Childsplay in fact, you just use the energy of a black hole and the gravitational energy to fold space and time. Another is to use the power of antimatter, the opposite of matter itself and when it is mixed with ordinary matter it creates a tremendous explosion which equals a huge amount of energy. Perfect for warping space although granted its not as efficient as a black hole, but its still good even if it leaves some pollution behind," the Doctor explained with a smile as she detailed the basics of warp travel, pleased the Time Lords who had sentenced her to exile on Earth had landed her in a point of the C20th where humans had some knowledge of space/time phenomena like black holes. Alright granted, it was at a primitive level still, but it was still a good knowledge so she didn't have to waste time explaining the intricacies of black holes.

The Doctor's expression became sadder, more sympathetic; Bernard got the impression she was feeling sorry for what had caused the Cybermen to become what they were even if it didn't excuse what they had done.

"But the point is the Mondasian Cybermen did not have scientific resources to experiment with antimatter or black holes. In this sense, tachyons make the most sense; they don't require that much energy to produce and harness for this type of work. With the same process you can use tachyons to fold space/time on itself, but this method is just as good."

Snell remembered the radioactivity his Geiger counter had picked up. "You can produce these faster than light particles with a nuclear reactor?"

"Or anything that has a very high output. A nuclear reactor won't produce many tachyons if what you're looking for is a propulsion system with a wide range, but it would produce them. The more reactors, the more tachyons and the more powerful the drive," the Doctor said.

Snell swallowed as a thought entered his mind. "Could the Cybermen be building a fleet of these ships?" he asked.

The Doctor was silent for a moment while she processed what the scientist had asked. Truth be told she had wondered ever since discovering the Mondasian Cybermen had access to the technology needed to develop faster than light drives. It wouldn't surprise her if they had a small fleet of ships with this type of engine, but she hadn't seen a hint of this type of Cyberman having any faster than light ships when she had run across them at Snowcap base. In truth it wasn't really necessary; the Cybermen only needed primitive interplanetary ships for the invasion of Earth. They didn't need to travel faster than light.

"I don't know," she admitted. "But it is possible."

The Doctor would have said more, but at that point, one of the Rocket Group came into the engine room, cast an appreciative and amazed look around, and would have continued to stare if Quatermass hadn't cleared his throat.

"Is everything alright?" Quatermass asked.

"Hmm?" the man asked before he remembered. "Oh, I'm sorry, Professor. But the army is here. They say they were ordered to come and retrieve the ship themselves."

The news made Quatermass groan. Snell sighed as well. "I'm not surprised. They would have found out eventually," he commented.

"Yes," Quatermass said and rubbed his face. "What are they doing now?"

"They're going through the ship now and getting us out now," the man hesitated. "There's….something off about them, Professor."

"What do you mean, off?"

"I don't know, but I tried to talk to one of them, crack a joke, like," the man said, his face full of worried confusion, "but he just stared at me and walked on."

"Did he seem…stiff?" Snell jumped when the Doctor spoke suddenly, and he turned to look at the Time Lady who was, in turn, looking at the man who'd brought them the news with distress on her face.

The man looked at the Doctor puzzled, but he nodded. "Yeah, he did," he replied.

The Doctor licked her lips and looked between Snell and Quatermass. The Time Lady was reminded of those times on the Wheel where she and Jamie had met Zoe when the Cybermen had tried to invade Earth, and then later that mess with Tobias Vaughn in 20th century London, only a few years from now, relatively speaking. This man had just described the Cyber mental domination symptoms too well.

The Time Lady was about to open her mouth and tell her new allies what this report meant when they suddenly heard the sound of screams echo through the ship, but before they could do anything about it, maybe leave the engine room to find a way to help when suddenly a tall figure burst in through the room, but before the Doctor, Professor Quatermass, Richard Snell, or the member of the Rocket Group could do anything there was a bright flash of light and it all went suddenly dark…

* * *

**Author's Note - I got the idea for the warp engine being powered by tachyons from the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Explorers" where Benjamin Sisko and his son Jake were suddenly propelled across space thanks to tachyons hitting the sails of a solar light-ship Benjamin had built in order to prove the ancient Bajorans had reached Cardassia. At the same time, Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation cross-sections have a page with a cutaway drawn by Graham Bleathman of Fireball XL5, a puppet science-fiction TV series older than Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, which shows the ship travelled faster than light with the use of a hyperdrive which folds space with tachyons. **


	7. Chapter 7 Cyber Threat

Wrong Time and Rockets.

The Cyberleader was presiding over a conference in the conversion room. The rest of his crew and the human soldiers who had been placed under Cyber control had moved the members of the British Rocket Group who'd been studying their ship into the conversion room, their intention for their prisoners was clear.

The only problem was they couldn't convert the humans.

However, the Cyberleader had studied all of the prisoners carefully and had problems with the decision to simply convert the lot. The Cybership was not large enough to contain a larger crew and their conversion equipment was designed primarily meant for experimentation. The scientific corps on Mondas needed the physiological data gleaned from the studies the Cybermen had performed on the humans they had captured so when their planet returned to its rightful orbit instead of endlessly drifting to the edge of the Milky Way galaxy as it had done for thousands of years, the Cybermen would be ready.

The Cyberleader and his group had been near Earth for the best part of a decade. They had arrived in the early 40s, and they had witnessed the chaos of the Second World War.

They had merely taken advantage of the horrors of the war in order to capture unwitting and luckless humans in order to experiment on them. The experiments had been both delicate and extremely extensive, and as they had expected many of the test subjects had died.

That was not a problem, in fact, it was supposed to happen. The bodies of the dead civilians and soldiers captured during the war from various countries - not that the Cybermen really cared since the humans were humans underwent autopsies, and the results were fed into the computer records of the ship which would be transmitted back to Mondas.

Everything was checked during the conversion process.

Bones, muscles, internal organs, skin, and the brain itself was examined. The Cybermen hadn't been anticipating any problems with the studies and they hadn't anticipated any problems with the future conversion of the human race since the humans were the genetic cousins of the Mondasian people. The Cybermen needed this biological data. In the past they had come across a few humanoid species on Mondas's journey through space, stealing their technology in the process, and the Cybermen had tried to convert them. It had not worked in every attempt, regardless of whether or not the Cybermen were cautious or not with the process. It made no difference.

In the end, it had been discovered the subjects genetic structures rejected the process. Each and every time. It didn't help matters there was a pressing problem. The Mondasian Cybermen were aware their race could not last forever, and with the long-ingrained desire to survive driving them, they had begun conducting research into ensuring the Cyber Race survived. With their current mission, they had discovered that humans, as the nearest genetic cousins of their forebears before cybernetic technology reached the point where nearly everything organic could be replaced, were the only ones whom they could convert.

There were other methods they could use to ensure the Cyber Race survived without going through all the trouble of finding ways of adapting their conversion technology so then they could effortlessly convert whatever was out there. Their research said it was possible in theory, but it would take too long to execute, and if anything happened to the Cybermen they would become extinct.

With that in mind, the Cybermen had constructed a space-ship capable of achieving faster than light speeds after spending many years studying and researching the methods thanks to the alien ships they had captured that had landed on their planet, although their resources for developing the technologies were practically non-existent. In the end, they had developed the prototype faster than light ship. The information had already been sent off to Mondas, and now the data was being examined in minute detail by the Cybermen back on their home planet.

The Cyberleader and his crew were aware that the biological data they had sent off would be examined in great detail by the scientists of Mondas while at the same time other plans would be explored while the computers were calibrated to take human stock for conversion. The Cyberleader was aware the Committee would be preparing other faster than light ships to distant worlds to sow the seeds for the conversion of other races, who would be researching cybernetics so then they would re-create the Cybermen in their own image. But the Leader was aware it may take centuries for that plan to come to fruition. It was irrelevant in the current situation.

The conversion machines which had originally converted the Mondasians en-masse when their race had come dangerously close to extinction would be used again and would be programmed with the

At the same time, the Cyberleader decided to use the time to conduct a conference in order to develop their plans. It wasn't much of a conference since the Cybermen all thought alike, and they were linked to a neural net that shared knowledge with each other.

The Cyberleader

"Our ship has been badly damaged," the Cyberleader was saying in the sing-song voice common to his branch of the Cyber race, "we shall need to repair it."

"The Tachyon Drive will have been reset by now, Leader," the engineer replied. "However the damage locator has indicated several sections have taken serious damage that will need to be addressed. However, that is not a problem."

The Cyberleader tilted his head. "Understood."

"Leader, what will we do with the humans we have captured?" the Cyberlieutenant asked.

The Cyberleader turned his head to study the unconscious pile of scientists and engineers who had come to investigate the ship. Nearby and standing opposite was the group of mind-controlled soldiers. "They are clearly scientists of a sort," the leader began after letting his computer-like brain process the information. "Can they assist in the repair of the ship?" he asked the engineer.

"It is possible. However they are more primitive than us in technological development but they can assist us with the repairs," the engineer replied.

"Good," the Cyberleader replied although the Cyberman began to process the possibilities along the lines of logic presented to them. "They shall also help us. We can ensure they dominate the Earth and control it while they convert the population."

"Yes," the Cyberlieutenant began following the same logic. "They can occupy the planet and control it before Mondas arrives."

The engineer was more practical with his logic, although a human would say the Cyberman was more pragmatic though it was not possible given how Cybermen didn't have emotions. "No. We cannot convert them at this stage. There will be few of them in number, and they will be outmatched by the powers of this planet. The logical conclusion will be to put them under our control and make them introduce the science of cybernetics on this planet in order to create a new race of Cybermen."

"Logical," the Cyberleader replied without any annoyance or jealousy of his subordinates suggestion. Cybermen didn't have emotions, the emotional inhibitors which were mounted in their antennae blocked off all emotional response in conjunction with the drugs and neurosurgical techniques which were executed during Cyber-conversion.

Emotion for Cybermen was replaced by its opposite, logic. As a result, all Cybermen were given to machine-level thinking and as far as they were concerned their original selves were dead. Armed with their new way of thinking, all Cybermen were dedicated to a desire to survive, which had been a part of their psychological makeup for thousands of years.

"Can we ensure the humans under our control remain that way when we are out of range?" one of the Cybermen asked.

The engineer turned to face the speaker. "Yes. We shall implant them with microchips which will maintain the control signal."

Meanwhile, the Doctor was listening to the conversation with interest, although the sing-song voices of the Cybermen were giving her an even worse headache than she had expected. The stun blast of the Cybermen had smashed into her chest, but fortunately, she had been standing in front of either Snell or Quatermass so when she had collapsed one of them had already been crashing to the ground, which cushioned the impact, but the sudden attack had threatened to knock her out. Although it was recommended for Time Lords to rest and enter healing comas in order to give the mind a break after a regeneration, it was incredibly dangerous for anything to happen which would knock her unconscious. If she did then she could go through another regeneration, and if that happened…. Well, it was best left unsaid, really. So soon and so early into a regeneration to be attacked was incredibly dangerous, and the Doctor had fought it before she had entered herself into a healing coma.

The Doctor had come out of the coma and after realising the stun-pulse hadn't triggered another regeneration to her relief, she had concentrated on the conversation while pretending to be knocked out, and she had listened to the plans of the Cybermen closely.

She wasn't surprised by them all that much.

That was the trouble with Cybermen, they were so incredibly predictable. Do this and you did that, or in this case, find this out, and they would do this. At the same time, she knew the Cybermen wouldn't pass off the opportunity for the human race to convert themselves; it would take years for Mondas to arrive, so why shouldn't the humans do the job instead of the Mondasians?

"Why don't you just leave?" the Doctor asked out aloud to announce that she was very much awake and aware of everything going on around her although she had her eyes closed.

She opened her eyes and found herself looking into the mask-like face of the Cyberleader. _What a lovely thing to wake up to_, she thought to herself which brought back a memory of waking up only to find herself looking into the grim helmeted face of an Ice Warrior.

"Sensors detect a binary vascular system. The logical conclusion is you are not human," the Cyberleader announced.

"Spot on," the Doctor replied, though she was inwardly surprised; none of the Cybermen she had encountered after her encounter with them with Ben and Polly where Mondas fell apart had ever bothered to scan her and comment on her second heart, though it was possible they had especially after her first regeneration and they hadn't commented on it because it had been logged and catalogued into the Cybermen's neural net as part of their profile of her in their history files.

"You are an alien," the Cyberleader said after coming to the logical conclusion. "Why are you here?"

"Oh, I just dropped in before the space probe that bounced off of your tachyon-warp field crashed," the Doctor replied thankful the Cybermen didn't seem interested in learning _what _species she came from even though it wouldn't make any difference to them since the Cybermen had no knowledge of the Time Lords. In any case she also didn't want to tell them about her exile.

"You know about aliens, then?" the Doctor went on, hoping to keep the Cybermen talking so then they didn't ask her any questions. Information was power, and she knew it only too well. It had helped her on many occasions against her enemies from the Daleks, the Monoids, the Master, the Monk, and the Cybermen, and she didn't want it to be used against her now.

"Yes. Many aliens have come to our planet before," the Cyberleader replied, not really seeing the point in denying anything since the female was an alien herself.

The Doctor nodded, not really surprised to hear that. It was part of the whole space exploration thing, really; you start to explore space, sending ship after ship deeper and deeper into space, and they would visit planet after planet and document everything they saw. If they saw a rogue planet like Mondas drifting off of its orbit then their curiosity would be peaked.

And she had a good idea what would have happened to the crews of those ships.

"Why are you here?" she asked, hoping to keep the conversation going so then she could work out a lot more of their plans even if the Cybermen had been speaking about them before, but the more she learnt about their plans the easier it would be for her to find a way to stop them.. The Doctor pushed that thought aside for the moment while she went over everything she had seen from the computer. She knew what the Cybermen were doing here, but she hoped to keep them talking so then they would say something which would be the key to defeating them.

"You were studying the computer," the Cyber-engineer pointed out. "You already know of our mission. Why do you need to ask us questions which you already know the answer to?"

_Because I am playing for time, you cybernetic zombie! _the Doctor thought to herself, but she offered the Cyberman a smile even if she knew it would be lost on them.

"Because I am curious. In any case, you're right. I did have a read through on your computers. But I only found out about your experiments on human anatomy. A bit basic, aren't they?" she went on conversationally, hoping the Cybermen would not see any reason not to give them the information she wanted. The more she knew about their current situation, the better.

"They are genetically compatible with us."

"Genetically compatible?" the Doctor repeated while doing her best to look puzzled while inwardly she was laughing because she knew precisely what they were saying. Unwittingly they had just given her a few clues. "You mean…you can _reproduce _with humans?"

"No. Cybermen are incapable of reproducing."

"Cybermen?" the Doctor repeated again, putting on the confused air. "I'm sorry, but I've never heard of you. You're a cybernetically-enhanced race, but you need humans to create more of you?"

She knew she was playing a difficult game here with the Cybermen but the Doctor hoped by acting confused they would give her the information she wanted.

"Yes. We were once inhabitants of this solar system before our planet which is the twin of this Earth and was thrown out of orbit and we drifted to the edge of space. Over the centuries, our people were getting weak."

"Weak? How?" the Doctor asked, pretending to be intrigued although she had heard all of this before.

"Our lifespans were getting shorter and resultant generations were dying frequently. Our scientists and doctors later turned to cybernetics to devise spare parts for our bodies until they could be completely replaced."

"And when you did that you lost the chance to reproduce naturally, and since your planet and this planet are twins, they would be compatible for your conversion process," the Doctor interrupted since she didn't want to repeat the same endless debate Polly had tried to have with the first Cybermen who invaded Snowcap base before she realised it was pointless, though she hoped the Cybermen here didn't notice it, or just assumed that because she was an alien herself she wouldn't ask any questions in an emotional manner.

"Yes. Our planet is returning to this sector of the galaxy thanks to the propulsion unit we installed on the surface to guide its course," the Cyberleader said.

"A planetary propulsion system?" the Doctor whistled, genuinely impressed with what she was hearing. "Now that is fascinating," she commented before she thought of something that had always confused her. "But why did you return here?"

"Over the course of our journey, we have encountered several alien groups," the Cyberleader ignored her question, "but we were never able to convert them."

The Doctor wasn't surprised to hear that. Cyber conversion was one of the most delicate processes she had ever encountered. At this point, the cyber conversion process was just simple surgery, but because of the lack of proper resources on Mondas since the rogue planet had often spent millennia drifting from one-star system to another, and all resources had been routed into ensuring the people survived rather than going into too much detail about cybernetics. At the time the Mondasians were busy trying to keep themselves _alive. _It never occurred to them that in the long run they would look out and desire to convert other races to ensure the Cyber Race survived, by the time they did their technology was only geared to converting humans who were genetically related to Mondasians.

At the moment, the Cybermen's conversion technology was more surgical; they just simply cut into and replaced perfectly good organs and muscles with metal and plastic, circuits and motors. But they could only do that because the machines on Mondas which were responsible for the process had been programmed with the anatomy of Mondasians, and she knew it wouldn't be a problem for them to include human anatomy into the computers as well since the two were compatible.

With other races, though…

The Cybermen's current conversion machines _could _hack into alien lifeforms, yes, but if they got one thing wrong such as stumble across an unexpected organ, a bone that the machine was not expecting, then it could lead to disaster. The Doctor knew that and she also knew the Cybermen from the future, for at least some of the groups that were out there, had refined their technology so then the conversion process was more genetic with the use of nanotechnology, but even then the technology was still touchy when it came to non-human stock.

"But you came here to see if humans could be converted," the Doctor stated while making it sound like a question although she knew the truth, she was just stretching her usual playing for time game.

"Our mission to this planet was to study the population and see if they were suitable," the Cyberleader confirmed. "The information was transmitted to our planet, as you are aware."

The Doctor smiled at the Cyberman's reminder that she knew quite a bit already. But she had something else in mind for them. "So you just want to survive, but surely there aren't enough people on this planet for that to be feasible?" she pressed. She was trying to work out if this part of Cyber history was the one she suspected; where the Cybermen had begun to spread their disease of conversion throughout the universe.

"We are preparing to introduce cybernetics into the minds of several races," the Cyberleader went on; the Doctor was inwardly thanking her lucky stars Mondasian Cybermen had little experience with other lifeforms and didn't see the logic in denying information compared to future Cybermen who were more experienced and were more guarded as a result, but she knew she could only push them so far before they folded. She hoped by being slow and subtle they would be speaking to her for a while before the others woke up.

"What does that mean?" the Doctor asked.

"We shall be controlling the minds of populations in order to develop cybernetics. Eventually, they will create Cybermen of their own," the Cyberleader went on.

_They're just starting out, _the Doctor thought to herself though she wasn't surprised when she heard the news. "What, let me see if I've got this right," she said, still carrying on with the facade. "You're cyborgs who want to survive, and you're _manipulating _other races you stumble on into creating your own race in their image, and you are going to do the same thing with Earth, but you're just starting out?"

"Yes. That is correct."

_Mondas. Planet 14. All of those other planets full of people who were manipulated by the Mondasian Cybermen or those who were just inspired by them in turn for what they were and decided to follow their example. How many worlds have the disease which is the Cybermen spread to? _the Doctor thought to herself as she looked at the Cybermen with contempt, inwardly accepting that the type of technology the Cybermen had used to become what they were, the bionic and cybernetic components, some of them were actually worthwhile since she had seen dozens of people over the years who had been terribly injured, and left with their bodies so badly damaged they would never have survived. Only to be saved by artificial limbs.

That was worthwhile use of cybernetics. But it was so easy for people to take it too many steps far and then repeat the mistakes Mondas made.

Even the _Daleks _despite being a cybernetically-enhanced species had never crossed that line, but that was more due to their beliefs in their own superiority and the way they believed their casings were more than enough. The Ice Warriors were the same, they just used their cybernetic armour to augment their strength and to protect themselves.

But finding out the Cybermen who already existed were starting to spread out….

She knew that many races had followed the Cybermen's example and developed the Cybermen in their own sick image after foolishly thinking the Cybermen represented supremacy, just continuing with Mondas's legacy but a lot of those races had been pushed, manipulated by the Mondasians into becoming cyborgs themselves without thinking about what it _would _do to them…

Sometimes the Doctor wished the Daleks had just become another branch of the Cyber-race. She wasn't sure why, really, she couldn't remember the exact reasons.

The Doctor took a deep breath and pushed that aside. There was nothing she could do; the destruction of Mondas and the spread of the Cybermen like seeds being expelled into the air was fixed in the Web of Time, but it didn't surprise her the Cybermen planned to do the same to Earth.

"Where is your planet now?" the newly-regenerated Time Lady asked; if she could figure out where Mondas was in relation to this, she might get a better idea of just how far the Cybermen had come.

"That is of no concern of yours," the Cyberleader replied, and the Doctor nodded feverishly as she realised she had overstepped the mark, but hopefully the Cybermen would continue to answer her questions.

"Alright, but what are you going to do with this lot?" she asked, already knowing what they planned to do since she had been eavesdropping on the Cybermen for a while before she gestured at the bodies of the scientists while she wondered just how long the Cybermen's stun pulse would last on them; her Time Lord constitution was more resilient than a humans, but surely Quatermass and the others must have started to come around since the pulse wasn't usually this powerful, or had the Cybermen deliberately knocked them out though the Doctor couldn't help but ask herself if the Cybermen were still inexperienced with humans at this point for their weapons to be set right.

"They will be placed under our control," the Cyberleader replied, breaking through her thoughts with that annoying sing-song twang all Mondasian Cybermen spoke with. "They shall become like us."

The Doctor remembered all the previous encounters she'd had with the Cybermen, from the Cybermen she had encountered at the end of her first body's life where the Cybermen who broke into Snowcap said they would take the entire human race to Mondas where they'd become Cybermen themselves, to the relatively recent - for her - mess with Tobias Vaughn.

Every time she encountered the Cybermen they continually went through the same loop.

Biting her lip and restraining the urge to ask the Cyberman what made them so sure the humans would _even want _to become like them, the Doctor asked a different question when she saw a flaw in their plan.

"There's only a few of them," the Doctor said quirkily as she pointed it out to them. "Some of them are scientists and soldiers. How do you plan to have them transform the entire human race?"

"The matter is of no interest to you."

"Yes, it is," the Doctor retorted, though she wondered just how much longer she could go on with this since the Cybermen was beginning to realise she was asking too many questions, if she could just work out what the Cybermen planned to do with the humans _here _then she could stop them before they tried. She needed to keep the timelines stable; not only were the Cybermen from Mondas defeated by humans but the invasion Vaughn would aid for his own gain was stopped by both her and UNIT and the Cybermen had been defeated.

But the Cyberman had clearly decided it was not going to answer any more of her questions. "No," the leader replied. "The matter is irrelevant. Our plans are of no further concern of yours."

The Doctor was impressed. She remembered how easy it was for the Cybermen to talk when she had first met them with Ben and Polly, but this time she had gotten quite a bit out of them. "Alright," she said when she realised she had no more chance of finding out how the Cybermen planned to take over the minds of everyone here and how they planned to put everything into place though she had a few ideas that even her regeneration-addled brain could work out, but she still wanted to keep the Cybermen talking. "What do you plan to do with me?" she went on. "I know a fair bit about cyborgs; even met a few, but from what I can tell," she said to make the Cybermen still believe she had never encountered their kind before, "your conversion process requires calibration even if the race you plan to perform it on is a genetic match, am I right?"

"You are correct," the Cyberleader stated in the flat emotionless way which didn't fit in with the sing-song computer-like way all Mondasian Cybermen spoke with.

The Doctor smirked back at the Cyberleader, amazed by just how easily Cybermen, on the whole, fell for the obvious. "Then what do you plan to do with me?" she asked, hoping the Cybermen didn't try anything with her which involved death.

The Cyberleader turned its head around to study the reactions of the other Cybermen as if wanting to see their reactions to the question and to hear their own opinions before turning back to the Doctor. "You will remain alive for now," the Cyberman eventually decided. "You have much knowledge which can be of value to us."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Do I?" she refused to be flattered by them.

"Yes. We are aware you arrived here under false pretences," the Cyberleader said. "Why are you here?"

"I'm just passing by, do I need an excuse to come to Earth?" the Doctor replied with no intention of telling the Cybermen about her exile. They wouldn't understand and besides she had no idea what the Cybermen would do with such knowledge, though truthfully she doubted it would make any difference.

"Who are you?" the Cyberleader asked, ignoring the question she'd thrown back into their plastic-covered faces.

"I am the Doctor," the Doctor replied, inwardly amused at the thought of introducing herself to a Cyberman, especially after she had been recognised by them after her first regeneration onwards because of the encounters her previous self had with them.

But at the same time, she wondered if these Cybermen had ever come across her at some point; she might not have landed on Mondas herself, but that didn't mean one of her future lives hadn't

"Doctors are not required. Cybermen never sicken."

"I'm not that type of Doctor," the Time Lady replied, inwardly curious that they hadn't heard of her especially given how random the TARDIS could be. "I'm just a scholar, really," she said, reflecting that despite becoming someone more involved following the Dalek invasion and Susan's departure before meeting Bennett on Dido, she was still essentially someone who wanted knowledge and wanted to see everything.

"Scholars need not exist. Cybermen download and upload knowledge," the Cyberleader said.

"Good for you," the Doctor sneered.

"You will become like us after you have given us your knowledge. We shall study you to learn more about your anatomy," the Cyberleader went on.

"You do realise it might be impossible for me to be one of you, don't you?" the Doctor asked while she hid her sudden dismay at the thought of being studied like she was a rat in a maze.

"That is irrelevant."

The Doctor was about to ask the Cybermen just how they planned to ensure the human race would be converted while she inwardly cursed herself for not knowing precisely just how their mind-control technology worked at this point in their history.

The good news was she had the soldiers around, so if she could find a way to take a good long look at them when she heard a loud groan coming from one of the humans.

Inwardly cursing the timing, the Doctor looked down at the humans. Some of them were now just starting to come around, but Quatermass was reviving quicker. She was about to comment on it, but she decided it wasn't worth it.

"What's going on?" Quatermass groaned as he started to wake up before he looked around and saw the towering, blank masked forms of the Cybermen before he noticed the soldiers who'd been placed under their control, and he jerked back in reflex.

"It's alright, Professor," the Doctor tried to reassure the scientist even though she knew if the Cybermen's plans went through it really wouldn't. "They haven't started yet."

Quatermass looked worriedly at the Cybermen while he was doing his level best not to react to them, but the Doctor could see the obvious fear mixing with the scientific curiosity. "Are they the Cybermen you told us about, Doctor?"

Instantly the Doctor raised a hand to shut the scientist up, but it was too late.

The Cyberleader jerked at the question. "You know of us?" he demanded of the Doctor, startling Quatermass at the sound of the cold, flat tone which had been spoken in a sing-song manner.

The Time Lady spared Quatermass a look. Fortunately, the scientist seemed to have worked out what he had done wrong.

"I've only heard of you," the Doctor replied after finishing off her glare in Quatermass' direction while she hoped the damage was minimal since the Cybermen only had machine-like instincts and weren't governed by their emotions enough to go off into paranoid rages. "I just wanted to know more about you."

"You shall be watched, Doctor," the Cyberleader reached his decision, though the Doctor had no idea if that was good or bad in some way.

"What are you going to do with us?" Quatermass demanded, hoping to redeem himself from his mistake.

The Cyberleader turned to the scientist blankly. Quatermass shuddered as the cold, expressionless black eyes just stared at him, and he wondered what kind of mind would think to turn an entire _population _into a race of machine-like people.

Granted, he could understand the desire to survive, but surely there had been other ways they could go about it, without going this far?

"You and your companions will become the first of a new race of Cybermen. You will be placed under our control and you will pass on the knowledge of cybernetics onto the population while ensuring their conversion into the new race," the Cyberleader announced coldly while some of the other scientists woke up and reacted at the sight of the Cybermen.

"What are you?" one of the scientists who'd just woken up asked.

The Cyberleader ignored the scientist. As far as it was concerned the time for talking was now long since over. Instead, it turned to the others. "Prepare them for mind-control. Have the Doctor taken to the cell bay."

"At once, leader," one of the Cybermen said and strode over to where the Doctor was sitting on the ground, but the Doctor was already getting up, moaning a little at the cramp in her legs, but she forced herself to stand up, wobbling a little bit while she directed some of her excess regeneration energy into her feet to help her recover quickly before she flinched when she felt the Cyberman's hands clamp down on her arm and drag her away. The Doctor had no choice but to follow rather than risk having her arm torn out of its socket. She walked with the Cyberman down the corridor silently while she slipped a hand into a pocket in her jacket without the Cyberman noticing, and she drew out what she was looking for. A couple of golden doubloons. Once she had found them and saw they were what she was looking for, she dug down into her pockets for the sonic screwdriver.

She had to work quickly before the Cyberman noticed what she was doing, but she hoped by the time it did, she would be ready.

* * *

Back in the conversion room, the Cyberleader looked at the other Cybermen as it reached a final decision.

"Place them inside the holding cell for now," the Cyberleader decided. "Our priority is to prepare the ship for immediate launch."

"Understood leader." With that, the other Cybermen unhooked their weapons and guided or picked up the struggling and protesting scientists up before they threw them almost carelessly into a holding cell in the room.

The Cyberleader turned to the mind-controlled soldiers. "You will assist us in the repair of the ship. You," he said turning to one of the other Cybermen, "will stay on guard here in the conversion room and prepare it for use."

"At once, leader," the Cyberman said, and instantly went over to the desk to prepare the conversion room machinery to implement the mind control plan.

The Cyberleader strode from the room followed closely by both the mind-controlled soldiers and the rest of his crew to begin preparing the ship for lift-off. As he walked out of the room, the Cyberleader reflected on their plans which still needed refining in some areas. They had been on Earth long enough to know that while much of the planet was recovering from the end of the last war, there were businesses out there dealing with technology and industry which would be perfect for the development of cybernetics in preparation for the conversion of the human race. It was the only logical solution. The Cybermen didn't understand the concept of business, but they understood enough to know it was the best way they could go into ensuring their plans worked. At the same time, the medical and scientific professions would also develop the science, and they would have the resources to develop the art of cybernetics in ways the Mondasian counterparts had not been able to.

Soon the human race would become Cybermen.

At the same time, the Cyberleader had time to think about the Doctor. An alien lifeform. Her presence gave the Cyberman some thought since the implications were many. The Cyberleader did not particularly care why the alien was on Earth. The matter was irrelevant. But the presence of an alien on Earth had implications for the Cybermen's plans, but if the Doctor's people planned to invade the planet then the Cybermen would need to act quickly to ensure it never occurred. Earth and its people had to remain safe for the Cybermen; they could not afford to be wasteful. Earth was needed for the energy drain Mondas would need in order to remain intact while they used the planets' relatively fresh mineral wealth in order to develop the Cybermen for a new wave of conquest. At the same time, they could not afford to lose the rich resource the planet had available.

The human race itself. They were valuable. Not only were the humans genetically compatible for Cyber-conversion, but they were also perfect for prolonging the Cyber-race.

The Cyberman had no idea why the Doctor was really on Earth, but they would find out.

* * *

The Doctor had needed to time her attack carefully once she had the doubloons and the sonic screwdriver ready. It wasn't much of an attack-plan, she had to admit. In fact it was downright risky; while the sonic screwdriver would be enough to deliver the pulse she'd need to disorientate the Cyberman a little bit given how primitive these Cybermen were compared to the more sophisticated models (when had she thought of Cybermen as if they were cars?), but she wasn't sure if it would work out though she knew the more advanced alien technology the Cybermen she had encountered after Mondas would have just shaken them up a bit and not done anything.

But she hoped the doubloons would do their work, though she didn't know if the Mondasian Cybermen were vulnerable to gold like the ones in that Cyber-war had been.

_Are they vulnerable to gold? _the Doctor asked herself curiously, wishing she had a more reliable way of finding out the truth without putting her life at risk like this.

The Doctor got her chance to escape as she was being led to the cells. She jabbed the sonic screwdriver into the face and the chest unit of the Cyberman and triggered the pulse. The Cyberman let out a weird musical gurgling sound and it lurched around swinging its arms around with sinister whipping sounds that didn't fool the Time Lady for an instant, she knew just one blow would be enough to cleave her head in two.

Deciding to give the doubloons a miss, the Doctor managed to grab the large Cyber gun out of its clips and she triggered it, wincing at the necessity. She gave the Cyberman one prolonged burst and the Cyberman dropped to the ground.

The Doctor looked down at the creature sympathetically in the hopes whoever the poor devil who had been underneath the mask and the suit was finally free. After dragging the Cyberman back into the brig where hopefully no-one would find it for some time, she hefted the gun in her hands, and she went off back in the direction of the conversion room.


	8. Chapter 8 Attack of the Cybermats

I own neither Doctor Who now Quatermass.

Please let me know what you think.

* * *

Wrong Time and Rockets.

As she walked through the corridors of the ship while she hefted the Cyber gun in her hands, dodging out of the way whenever she heard the sound of footsteps ranging from the heavy sounds of the Cybermen and the booted feet of the soldiers placed under Cyber control while she headed back for the conversion room to see what had happened to Quatermass and the others, the Doctor wondered what it said about her general lifestyle she seemed to get involved in things very quickly while at the same time she reflected on the Time Lord's choice for a destination time for her exile to begin.

When she had come here she had thought the Time Lords had gotten everything wrong, but she had to admit the landing spot where the TARDIS would materialise so close to the Cybermen's ship just after it crashed was a good place as any to start her exile.

_Well, I did tell them about the Cybermen during my trial, _she mused to herself as she tried to make it to the conversion room, _it makes sense the Time Lords would likely send me to a point where I'd know what to do. _

At the same time, the current mess gave her the _adrenaline rush_ she needed to push aside the usual post regenerative effects. It also gave her the chance to push aside her earlier thoughts about what her new gender and her new circumstances meant on a long-term basis. When she had been at the Academy and learnt about cross-gender regeneration, she had never really condemned it but she had still appreciated the issues which would likely emerge if one of her male incarnations ever regenerated into a female body because they had never been born female; just because Time Lords were a technologically advanced people with a history spanning millions of years which represented enormous growth in several social areas where things like gender weren't really looked at the same way short-lived races like humans, that did not mean her people could not sometimes feel…wary about regenerating into a body which was a different gender.

And besides, the Doctor had been in her first incarnation when she had left Gallifrey. Alright, so in that incarnation, she had been so arrogant she had believed not only would the Time Lords not catch her, and at the same time she hadn't really given any thought to regeneration, and why should she at the time given how long Time Lords could live for one body?

But now…

The Doctor had no problem seeing her regeneration, her new gender, and her exile as being a collection of massive upheavals in her life. Not only had she regenerated for the second time after hoping she could hold off another regeneration following the upheaval in her life following her original regeneration before that mess with the Daleks had taken priority.

Regeneration itself had always scared her; the idea of having thirteen different variants of the same personality crowding inside your mind while new appearances swanned around had always been worrying for her first incarnation to hear before that body had been so worn down it had been hard just to keep moving, but she would never forget the way Polly and Ben had been suspicious about her _identity _before that Dalek had identified her.

Now…. not only had she regenerated into a completely new body complete with a new gender, but she had the one thing she had always felt defined her life taken from her.

She decided to push that out of her mind. While being female now was unexpected since she hadn't really looked at the screen after the presiding Time Lord lost patience with her previous incarnation after acting out like an idiot even though deep down it was futile, and her previous self had known it, she had to admit at least everything was brand new and if there was one thing she had always liked about her lifestyle it was every time she travelled from one place to another, and a new regeneration was nothing different. That didn't mean she was prepared to deal with it with few resources on short notice.

_Still, I've got plenty of time to think how long this will affect me in the long term, haven't I, given the Time Lord presiding over the trial told me I would be stuck here for as long as they deem proper, at least before I acted like an idiot_, she thought to herself before she backed away when she overheard the sound of footsteps, and she saw a Cyberman leading a group of soldiers through the ship's corridors, presumably to begin certain tasks.

The Doctor came to the corridor where the conversion room was located. She wasn't surprised the door was unguarded outside; with the crew occupied with restoring their ship to working order, the Cybermen simply didn't have the resources to guard different parts of their ship from anything, and besides what would be the point?

The Cybermen may be wary of her, especially given the latter half of her talk with them when she had tried to find out more about their plans before Quatermass had opened his mouth, to say nothing about how they knew she was not human, but as far as they were concerned the Cyberman who had escorted her to the cells was locking her up, though she didn't have any doubt in her mind they would miss him given how small the crew on the ship was.

That was why she was trying to work as quickly as she could. If she could get inside the conversion room and get the scientists out of the holding unit inside, and if they could find a way of stopping the Cybermen…The Doctor closed her eyes and accepted she didn't have any proper plan since she still knew so little about what the Cybermen were planning and how they were going to do it.

But maybe…. The Doctor edged closer to the door and opened it…and instantly came in sight of the Cyberman in the room while the scientists and engineering team Quatermass had brought with him from the Rocket Group noticed her instantly and desperately looked at her. For the moment the Doctor was taken by surprise by the sight of the Cyberman, but as it edged closer to her she raised her stolen weapon and blasted the Cyberman to the ground.

Closing the door, the Doctor ran over to the holding unit and slapped a hand on the locking mechanism.

"Doctor," Quatermass came out of the cell. "The Cybermen are going to come back-."

"I know," the Doctor replied, not even remotely surprised. "Hopefully we can get out of here before that happens."

Quatermass nodded, but one of the scientists, a man similar in physical age to the Doctor's new incarnation was looking around in a mixture of confusion, scientific curiosity, and fear.

"I don't understand this," he protested, his accent denoting him as coming from Scotland. "What is happening, who are these…these _things? _And who are you?" Angus went on, looking around wildly gesticulating before he pointed a finger at the Doctor, jabbing it in her direction madly.

"Angus-," Richard Snell began.

"We don't have time for this," Quatermass snapped at the scientist. "We told you what they were-!"

"No, Angus is right!" one of the other scientists protested, and the others loudly voiced their agreement. "What is going on? Who is this woman?"

"That's enough!" Quatermass yelled, but the Doctor put a hand on his arm; shouting was the last thing they needed right now, especially with the Cybermen out there.

"No, Professor." The Doctor's voice contained such a note of such authority it quelled the fighting. She looked over the group of scientists and engineers and sighed. From the sounds of it, the scientists had been so terrified by what was going on - being attacked and locked up in a room where they were probably told they would become creatures like the ones who'd captured them would do that for them. The Doctor's mind raced as she thought about what she was going to say. Ordinarily she hated explanations because they took too long, but in this case, she didn't feel there was any harm and besides the more they knew about their current mess, the better. Exercising her talent for taking charge without trying, she explained what was going on.

"Those things," the Doctor began, mentally working out what she could say without them hanging around in this conversion room forever without someone walking in - she didn't know how long it would take for the Cybermen to start missing the one she had dealt with in the cell, but that didn't mean someone couldn't come in here out of impulse - and she gestured with her hand towards the dead Cyberman she had shot down when she had come in, "are called Cyberman. They are the cybernetically-enhanced versions of a human-like race from a planet called Mondas, the twin planet of this Earth. Short story, it broke out of orbit and left the solar system centuries before your species even learnt how to weave cloth. The Mondasians developed a civilisation. They started becoming weaker and weaker, and their lives were being cut short. What do they do? They turn to cybernetics and started replacing body parts with machine-parts and then they augmented their very _brains _to remove all emotions because they couldn't stand what they were doing to themselves. Now they're back - they want to transform the human race into Cybermen, and they have a plan to do that before their planet returns to Earth orbit. They plan to take control of your minds, and force you to find ways of introducing cybernetic technologies into human beings so then your people will begin converting their bodies until they repeat Mondas' mistakes."

Everyone in the conversion room was left staring at the Doctor with surprise, though whether the surprise was because of what she had just said in the chilling silence, or the fact they had just been given the facts instead of being told to wait until much later, the Doctor neither knew nor did she particularly care.

But Angus had another question on his mind. "That…doesn't tell us who you are?"

The Doctor closed her eyes for a second before she reopened them impatiently. They didn't _have _time for _this. _"I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord, well, Time _Lady _now. I am a time-travelling alien from the planet Gallifrey. I travel in time and space in a time ship known as the TARDIS. I am currently five hundred years old."

The Doctor suddenly hiccuped, though she was amazed by the timing of the hiccup. A small stream of golden particles came out of her mouth. "And I have regenerated - a Time Lord trick of biology where a burst of energy rebuilds our bodies on a molecular level, which replaces all organs, bones, muscles, and we can change height, weight, appearance, and even in some cases gender - into the third of thirteen lives I shall have before my final death. I am also a renegade Time Lady because I left my planet without permission and started involving myself in the affairs of other races and events. I am currently stranded on this planet, but I am here to help. And I want to stop the Cybermen in their tracks before they do any damage. I believe that answers your questions. And now, I really recommend we leave this room. If we don't, then the Cybermen will recapture us."

Angus and the other scientists involved with Professor Quatermass were left looking at the Doctor in shock as she completed her monologue. For a moment no-one spoke before Quatermass walked over and gently placed a hand on the Doctor's shoulder.

"It's true," he began. "The Doctor is telling the truth. She is also right when she says we have to get out of here before the Cybermen get back."

The Doctor caught a silvery flash of movement in her peripheral vision and she turned her head and her eyes widened in horror when she caught sight of a small silvery segmented insect-like creature on the ground. "Look out!" she yelled as the Cybermat leapt into the air, but she clubbed it aside.

Everyone in the room was stunned by the silver object leaping in the air and the Doctor's shout, but they jumped back in horror when the Cybermat, recovering from the Doctor's attack, righted itself and moved closer to them, buzzing at them.

The Doctor raised the Cyber weapon she'd captured from the Cyberman earlier, and out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Angus grab the other weapon from the Cyberman who'd been guarding them all before she'd arrived. Angus examined the weapon. "How does this thing work?" he demanded.

"The handgrips. They're the triggers. You just point the gun and press," the Doctor explained while she tried to swallow her distaste for holding a weapon up even if the target was a Cybermat.

The Cybermat was on the floor, still buzzing at them while it moved around, thrusting its front out a few centimetres before it backed up and moved around in a circle before thrusting its front out again, and repeating the pattern. It seemed like it was getting its bearings since it had worked out the Doctor and Angus were the key threats since they both had weapons.

The Doctor had never seen this type of behaviour from Cybermats before even if she knew them to be incredibly dangerous. She knew they were intelligent in their own way, but their intelligence was simpler compared to that of a Cyberman. At the same time she remembered her own personal encounters with them, remembered how they had cornered her, Jamie, Victoria, and other members of the ill-fated expedition on Telos in the control room of their city, and she remembered how they had _eaten _the Wheel's stock of Bernalium so the X-ray laser couldn't thwart their invasion of Earth.

But this Cybermat….

She knew it was trying to find a way through. She raised the gun up…only to scream in pain suddenly when she felt _another _Cybermat dig its little hooks into her skin like thorns or the claws of a cat before she felt a terrible bite on her neck. The gun in her hand dropped to the ground and she could hear the sounds of everyone shouting her name, but she staggered around while she tried to get the Cybermat off of her neck before she felt something entering her body through the wound.

"Get it off!" she shouted desperately as she dropped the Cyber-gun and grabbed hold of the Cybermat, but she could feel the thing pumping its poison into her system and it made it hard for her to get it off. She saw Quatermass and Snell and a few other scientists crowd around her, grabbing hold of the Cybermat and yanked it off while out of the corner of her eye she saw another scientist blasting away at the other Cybermats which were coming into the room.

The Doctor staggered away shaking once the Cybermat was taken off, and she shook while she felt the poison in her veins. Desperately she looked down at her hands, and she wasn't surprised when she saw the black lines being formed as the virus coursed its way through the nerves underneath the skin. The Doctor ground her teeth together while she shook. She had encountered this kind of virus before, back in the early days of her previous life just after Jamie had joined the TARDIS. She closed her eyes while she concentrated on her remaining regeneration energy - she had no idea if her immune system was capable of holding off the virus, although she suspected it wouldn't affect her as it had many of the moonbase personnel when the Cybermen had tried to take over the Gravitron, and besides while she felt a bit dizzy feeling the effects of the virus, it wasn't causing her any real problems though she had no idea if it was her alien nature or her regenerated-boosted immunity - but she wasn't going to let the virus be her killer; the start of her new life, no chance. In any case, if she could survive a bullet wound to her head when the threat of the Myloki invasion returned, she could survive a virus like this.

She smiled in relief when she felt the burning energy coursing through her body suddenly becoming much warmer, and she watched as her hands started to glow gold and the virus lines in her veins disappeared. She smiled while she overheard the gasps of amazement from the various scientists.

"How…how are you doing that?" Angus asked, looking at her glowing hands. He still stared at them while the glow faded.

The Doctor mentally sighed. She hoped this Angus was not the type of scientist who asked a thousand questions about a subject without once giving up. Still, the Doctor smiled while she lifted her head and grinned at him. "15 hours into my new incarnation," she replied. "Still got some residual energy to perform a few miracles. That virus may not have been strong enough to deliver its full effects to my body, but I still had enough energy from my last regeneration to stop it in its tracks."

She looked past the scientists crowding around her, and she saw the silvery remains of the Cybermats.

"Are you alright, Doctor?" Quatermass asked while he studied her and saw that the lines had gone as had the bite.

"Hmm. Oh, I'm fine," the Doctor replied, unconsciously rubbing her neck where the Cybermat had punctured her skin.

"What did it bite you with?"

"A neurotropic virus. It follows the course of the nerves under the skin. I've come across something like it in the past," the Doctor replied, but she nodded towards the Cybermats. "We'd better get out of here. I don't know how many Cybermats there might be inside this part of the ship, but we should leave before any more appear."

The Doctor retrieved the Cyber-gun from the scientist who'd taken it and walked over to the door. She poked her head out and when she was sure there weren't any Cybermen or mind-controlled humans outside, she opened the door and led them out.

"Alright, come on," the Doctor whispered, and she led them through the corridors to the outer airlock. They ducked out of the way when a pair of mind-controlled soldiers walked past, both of them carrying pieces of Cyber-technology. When they were out of sight, the Doctor calmly walked in the direction of the airlock.

One of the scientists sidled up to her. "Can't we help the soldiers?" he asked.

"We can," the Doctor replied, inwardly happy her new companions shared her feeling towards the mind-control. "But I need to take a look; I've got some ideas of how this form of mind-control can work, but I need to get you all out of here so then they can't use you."

"But won't they see we're outside-?"

"At the moment they're currently busy restoring their ship to full working order," the Doctor quickly said, "as far as they're concerned the holding unit inside the ship is still full, and the Cybermats were part of the security system. The Cybermen have got a lot more on their minds than us."

Angus and the other scientists seemed to be accepting of the explanation while they walked through the ship. Occasionally they had to stop as Cybermen or mentally-controlled soldiers walked past, but the journey to the airlock was easy. When they arrived she wasn't surprised to find the airlock door was completely and firmly shut.

The Cybermen didn't have the resources for guarding their ship at the moment, and they were aware of Major Pike's detachment's orders to guard the ship. When she thought that, she wondered if there were other mentally-controlled soldiers outside, and she considered that it was a probability. The Doctor was about to open the door when she spotted a glowing blue light. She recognised it as a security lock. She took out her sonic screwdriver and disabled the security lock for a moment before she opened the door.

"Aright," the Doctor said when the door was fully opened. "The Cybermen have probably got a few soldiers under their control outside, the best thing to do will be to hide while I try to stop them."

"Just you? You mean by yourself?"

"That's right. I can get more done by myself," the Doctor replied, though once the words were out of her mouth she wished she could suck them back inside her mouth, she hurried on, "and besides with all of us free, the Cybermen will have a greater chance of catching us."

The scientists looked at one another and realised the Doctor had a point. Quatermass looked thoughtfully at the Doctor. "What do you have in mind, Doctor?"

"I need to find out how the Cybermen plan to take over your planet. At the same time I can find out how their mind-control works," the Doctor said, wondering if the depolariser her second self had rigged up during those incidents where the Cybermen were trying to use mind control on the Wheel and on Earth during her first operation with UNIT could be rigged up here, but she had no idea if the scientists had any radio sets strong enough to deliver a signal to break through the conditioning, "and stop it."

"It sounds simple."

"It's not," the Doctor replied bluntly. "I have encountered Cybermen from the future, and their methods are more advanced. I don't know what they're like right now in their current timeframe."

She changed the subject and she reset the Cyber gun with a small switch on the side before she handed it to a scientist. "I've just switched that gun to stun mode. Point it at the soldiers, and they will drop stunned. Good luck."

With that, the Doctor went back into the ship.

* * *

The scientists walked out of the airlock slowly, cautiously since they were worried in case there would be soldiers waiting for them on the other side of the door. As they walked out of the spaceship, they spotted the tall form of a soldier patrolling the area in the distance, walking with machine-like briskness while hefting up the rifle in their grasp. The scientists waited in the airlock door, and they spotted a second soldier, who was also patrolling the area with the same machine-like brutality.

The scientist holding up the Cyber weapon the Doctor had modified, crept out and headed out to the soldiers, and carefully followed the closest soldier and shot him to the ground. Alerted by the noise, the second soldier raced over. The moment he spotted the scientist near his fellow guard, the soldier lifted his gun.

Shuddering at the blank-faced look in the soldier's face, the scientist had the Cyber gun in his own hands and he shot the soldier to the ground, praying to God the Doctor was able to restore the soldiers to normal. The last thing he wanted was to be responsible for the death of two soldiers who'd been brainwashed by an alien race. The scientist scouted around the ground where the Cybermen's ship had crashed in case there were other soldiers patrolling nearby, but it seemed the Cybermen had only left two soldiers outside on patrol while the others were inside performing the tasks of the cyborgs.

It made sense they would only need two to uphold the illusion all was well, and if anyone came then the soldiers would simply turn them away, and if that idiot police officer turned up and demanded to know what was happening, the soldiers could simply say the rest of the soldiers and the scientists were inside the ship and the soldiers were merely supervising the operation.

When the coast was clear, the scientists streamed out of the ship but Professor Quatermass was not with them. He had hung back. He had watched as the Doctor had run off deeper into the ship. It offended his dignity as a scientist to just let the Doctor be on her own inside the Cybermen's ship, but a part of him that was concerned for the fairer sex was also worried, and although he knew about the Doctor's past as a man before she had been exiled to Earth, he was still concerned for her.

Quatermass turned and went back inside the ship. He wasn't worried about the others, Richard was with them and he had a good head on his shoulders. He'd get them all to safety.

* * *

The Doctor wasn't that far from the airlock. She was trying to get a clear idea of where the Cybermen had their mind-control equipment. She had a feeling the Cybermen had taken control of the soldiers and they had simply transferred control of the soldiers from them to the ship since the Cyber Mondasians didn't have the processing ability to control minds for long periods whereas their descendants would overcome that problem if what she had seen on the Wheel had been any clue, but she didn't know where to look here. She had studied Cyberships before, but her knowledge of them was rather limited.

It didn't help when she had been caught with Snell and Quatermass, she had only seen a small amount of the ship.

_I can't stay here forever, _she thought practically to herself before she realised she could hear footsteps, and she ducked out of sight but she kept watch and listened.

The Doctor was shocked when she heard the footsteps, they didn't sound crisp like a conventional Cyberman's steps. Professor Quatermass appeared.

"Professor!" she hissed as she stepped out of her hiding place.

Relief crossed Quatermass' face. "Doctor!"

"What are you doing here?" the Doctor asked angrily. "I told you to get out with the others."

"I know, but there is still so much to learn and see," Quatermass protested, seeing the anger in the Doctor's face.

The Doctor looked away. She was angry. She had wanted to come into the ship on her own so then she would have to worry about nobody else's safety but her own. The problem with companions was they wandered off, and she did not need that. "Why does no-one listen to me?" she whispered to herself. "Do I just have faces no-one listens too? Again!"

But the real reason was a lot more tragic than that. She had just said goodbye to Serena, the young Time Lady sent with her to Earth to stop the Countess and the rest of the Players, to say nothing of how the Time Lords had wiped the memories of Jamie and Zoe before they had sent them home. The last thing the Doctor wanted was for anything to happen to the professor even if she felt his scientific curiosity was the purest thing she had experienced for a while.

Quatermass didn't know what to say about that, so he kept silent.

The Doctor sighed in resignation. "Alright," she said, at last, turning to glare at the professor. "You can come; it's probably too late to send you out anyway. But if I tell you to do something, you do it. I mean it," she added with a glare. "If I tell you to do something then do it."

Quatermass nodded, and the Doctor closed her eyes. "Come on," she said, leading him down through the corridors.

* * *

Author's note - For Doctor Who fans the Myloki were featured in _The Indestructible Man, _a Captain Scarlet inspired novel where the second Doctor was injured badly enough to nearly regenerate.


	9. Chapter 9 End of the Cybermen

I don't own Doctor Who or Quatermass - I just own this story.

Please feel free to leave feedback.

* * *

Wrong Time and Rockets.

As he walked cautiously with the Doctor through the ship while they dodged the occasional Cyberman, Quatermass wondered if the fact he was out of his depth was obvious as he went through the ship's purely functional corridors. Yes, he had wanted to come and help the Doctor find a way to stop the Cybermen, though at the same time he had hoped to learn a lot more about what was out in the universe than what everyone else here on Terra Firma knew.

When he had begun the British Rocket Group, Bernard had always expected that he would have conflicts only with politicians and military people who wanted to take advantage of his expertise and his work to further their own agendas.

The military was obvious enough. They were greedy, determined to not lose pace with other countries who were developing their own rocket programs, though only a few of some of them were dedicated solely to the type of work Bernard was involved with. They wanted rockets for their own purposes and were probably coming up with several _imaginative _plans for turning his rockets into weapons of war. They were also thinking of turning rockets into nuclear weapons to make them, even more, deadlier than they had been when the rockets had been used by the Germans in the last war.

The politicians who governed the government, if you could indeed call it that, wanted to please the public and the military. On one side, the government didn't want to scare the public of the country and were spinning tales of how rockets would help them. But on the other, there were politicians who wanted to continue with the single-minded fighting that had been around for years. It was madness.

And yet out of all that, Quatermass had been able to launch his rockets into space. Once he had seen a friend becoming an alien _creature, _and now he was walking through another alien-built spaceship and he wondered just what else would change.

It was strange, but ever since he had witnessed what had happened to Victor before this latest mess with the Cybermen had started and he had been introduced to the Doctor, a time-travelling alien from another world who had the power to have her very appearance and _gender _altered who came from a species who not only travelled through time but seemed to have taken _possession _over time, and had been exiled to Earth simply because she had gone out and done things her people didn't like, Quatermass' entire view of space and what it held had been thrown out of the window.

But now he was now with a woman who he barely knew and had known for only a few short hours and yet had completely turned his entire view on its side although it had been on the verge of toppling for a long time.

And yet he wanted to know more. Although the Cybermen were disturbing and their aims and their desire made him both pity and feel disgusted towards them although the pity outweighed his disgust for them since the Cybermen had torn themselves apart, mutilating themselves and turning themselves into Cybermen by augmenting their bodies with technology, Quatermass wished it hadn't come to that, although he wondered if some of the Mondasians had realised what had been happening to their people before it was too late.

It was morbid, but at the same time Quatermass could understand why the Cybermen had done what they had, but he still could not _grasp _what had made the Cybermen take such a good concept and use it to twist themselves like this.

"So where are we going?" Quatermass asked shortly after they went moving through the Cybership while he hoped taking with the Doctor could take his mind off of the Cybermen.

"I want to get to the control room of the ship."

_Well, that's helpful, _Quatermass thought to himself as the Doctor led him through the corridors of the ship. The Doctor had been relatively silent since he had joined her after everyone else had left the ship for safety. "What are we going to do there?" he asked.

The Doctor stopped when they heard the sounds of footsteps not far from where they were. Quatermass had to wonder just how long this would go on for before they were caught; so far the Cybermen and the mind-controlled soldiers were busy with other tasks, but that didn't mean they couldn't be found by chance. Fortunately, the footsteps faded in the distance, but neither the Doctor nor Professor Quatermass moved.

The Doctor looked at the human scientist and sighed. She had no idea if the anger she had felt towards him disobeying her wishes (she wasn't going to call them orders, not only because the word was so militaristic, but it made it sound like she was a Dalek) had something to do with her new personality, or whether it was just a touch of her previous self's guilt over Serena's death and Zoe and Jamie's departure. Both of those events had permanently scarred her life. She did not want someone else she felt she was getting close to dying because she had been careless.

She hoped it never happened.

Not only did she want to keep everyone alive this time, give her new self something to be proud of when the last time she had regenerated, a whole _human colony _had nearly been wiped out by the Daleks because of a gang of rebels who were too stupid to think about the consequences, and she did not want the same thing to happen again. At the same time, she didn't want any more deaths on top of the loss of Jamie and Zoe, Serena, her regeneration, the inhibitor inside her TARDIS which signified her exile to Earth, she wanted to keep Professor Quatermass alive. That was why she was upset he was with her.

"I want to get to the control room for a few reasons," the Doctor replied, at last, deciding she could think about her long-term plans and feelings later, hopefully with the Cybermen gone. "I need to find out how the Cybermen plan to take control, but at the same time I want to try to find a way to stop this ship from leaving Earth."

"And you think the answer is in the control room?"

"I can't think of a better place to start." The Doctor looked around the corridor t-junction they were in as she tried to get her bearings of where they were and where they needed to be.

The electrical lighting of the ship came on, though it was quite dim.

Quatermass looked up at the lighting panels. "It looks as though the Cybermen have managed to get some systems working properly again. How long will it take for them to repair the engines?"

"They're probably doing it now. They had to shut down the main lights to conserve power, but now it looks like they're nearly done."

The two walked on through the Cybermen's ship while they headed up to the control room. As they passed through the corridors it became increasingly obvious to them both the Cybermen's repairs to their ship had almost been completed at least as far as Quatermass was concerned.

"How long do you think we have?" he asked while he heard a rising humming thrum of power inside the ship which put him in mind of a living thing.

"I'm not sure. It can't be long, though. The Cybermen only shut down their faster than light drive to reset mode, so it should be coming back on anytime soon. And besides that the repairs the Cybermen need to work on are very slight, so it shouldn't take too long for them to finish up and the ship will be ready for space," the Doctor replied.

Quatermass looked around the corridor, wondering just _what forces were behind interstellar travel, _but the thought alone of something capable of warping space/time alone was enough to give him a headache and yet excite him at the same time. "It hardly seems worth it, does it?"

"What?" the Doctor turned to look at him questioningly, wondering what he meant by that.

Quatermass sighed. He hadn't meant to say that but now that he had to get it out. "My work on rockets. It hardly seems worth it, not when you compare alien ships like this and your TARDIS to them. I have spent years and years getting rockets out there, deeper and deeper into space, and yet they've barely been powerful enough to travel beyond the moon or Mars, never mind the outer planets in our solar system. And then when you see this," he waved a hand around the corridor, "and your TARDIS, everything we've done doesn't seem to have worked."

"That's where you're wrong, Professor," the Doctor replied, understanding the physically older man's attitude completely. It was obvious Professor Quatermass was feeling out of his comfort zone and he didn't have the ability to cope with everything that was happening, though he had managed to try. "Your rockets are worth it, true it will be a long time before rockets reach the moon or Mars, but they will get there in the end. Every race develops, and humans are no exception. Look, lets wind the clocks back to about seventy years ago; back then you didn't have controlled heavier-than-air planes, and most of the experiments going into the work were either done by people who weren't even trying, or there were some really good ideas but a lot of the work hadn't gone as well as they had planned, but were used for the later experiments. At the same time, you had lighter-than-air craft, dirigibles and airships, and the technology became more and more refined until you had gargantuan airships like the Hindenberg, and you know what happened there, Professor. In 1903, the Wright brothers launched the first practical heavier-than-air plane. In your First World War, aircraft had become more and more refined as technology advanced. By this point, in the 1950s, the aircraft are no longer made with strong lightwood, but from aluminium. It takes just one breakthrough, Professor, and then you've got yourself a whole new science."

Quatermass looked at the Doctor with some surprise. He hadn't expected this argument from her, but as he listened to what the Time Lady was saying he had to accept she had a point.

"Your rockets are primitive. _At the moment. _But you've _got them into space. _That is a colossal achievement for a species, one that many races who've been in space for centuries take for granted. Who cares if you haven't gotten a rocket beyond the moon? It will happen," the Doctor smiled at him before inspiration came to her.

"You mentioned my TARDIS, Professor," the Doctor went on, "my people had to develop the technology. We had to study the finer points of time travel, learn the theory from scratch. We had to go through trial and error experiments, using the successes and the failures to move on and develop them to a finer degree. When the first TARDIS was developed, my people went on with our research, and it hasn't stopped. The first models were used to anchor the Web of Time into the universe itself, while later models were developed to test new technologies and sciences. The original TARDISes weren't bigger on the inside, it was only when we advanced later we discovered dimensional transcendentalism and used it to make our ships bigger on the inside. The Type 30 and Type 40 models were revolutionary designs, and they have shaped the way TARDIS research is done. In fact, my people could never have advanced without any of the earlier models, and I can't see that changing. We all develop, Professor. One day humanity will send probes deeper and deeper into your solar system. And one day, the human race will learn how to travel to other worlds, located hundreds of light-years away from Earth. And _that _is where true exploration lies."

A smile crossed the Doctor's face even though she had no intention of telling Professor Quatermass anything about _how _humanity gained faster than light technology; explaining those events would take forever, and it wouldn't be understood the answer was on Earth the whole time.

"Do you really think humanity would have the technology for such flight if not for your work?" the Doctor finished.

Quatermass went silent as he listened to the Doctor speak.

The Doctor could see Quatermass go deeply in thought about what she had said, but the Time Lady didn't have time for deep thinking. They had to get to the control room, deal with the Cybermen before they finalised the preparations for their plan against the human race. As they approached the control room, the Doctor fished the doubloons out of her pocket and she went rummaging around in the others.

"What are you doing?" Quatermass gave her an irritated look.

The Doctor ignored him as she continued rummaging around in her pockets. She pulled out a huge amount of junk which made Bernard's eyes widen as he took in the sheer volume before she found what she was looking for.

"A catapult?" Quatermass asked aloud, confused.

"Yes," the Doctor replied while she stuffed her junk back into the pockets.

"Why do you need it?"

The Doctor was still stuffing her pockets full of her junk - she decided to work out what she was going to keep and what she wasn't when she changed her clothes - but she smiled at the professor. "Cybermen are heavily armoured. Their bodies are augmented with technology so they're cyborgs, which means they have respiratory systems allowing them to exist and work in environments like the depths of the sea, or in the vacuum of space, much like a spacesuit or a diving suit. Their chest units control and regulate their life-support systems, but for some reason, _gold _can interfere with their systems, in effect suffocating the Cybermen."

"Gold can suffocate the Cybermen?"

"Oh yes. There have been Cyberwars in the future where the Cybermen were defeated by weapons that spread fine particles of gold dust into the air; just one particle was enough to kill a Cyberman. I've even heard of the same principle taken much much further; I once heard of a Cyberwar which ended very quickly because the humans fighting against them in a galactic alliance teleported glitter bombs onto Cyber ships where they spread gold particles everywhere and wiped out the Cybermen before they could even fire their weapons. At the same time, they used bombs packed full of gold dust with a long central explosive built into the core. When it exploded the gold would cover a vast area. Thousands of Cybermen were destroyed. In those centuries, the Cybermen were then later hunted down and destroyed with the same method. The alliance I told you about just now, they didn't want another Cyberwar. So they went out into the galaxies, relentlessly hunting the Cybermen down. They had planted tracking devices on their ships as the Cybermen broke off and proceeded to different parts of the universe where they could rebuild themselves. They seeded dozens of worlds much like Mondas is doing now. Much of it was later destroyed after years and years of work, through the use of gold dust. Gold is one of the best and simplest ways to kill a Cyberman, but I don't know if it would happen with this form of Cyberman, that's the problem," the Doctor looked grimly at the gold coins in her hand, clearly wondering if it was even worth using them.

"Do you think it's a good idea to try?" Quatermass asked, looking worriedly down at the coins as he started to realise the Doctor's concerns, and he received a pointed look from the Doctor in return. They only had the one try and it had to work the first time if they didn't then the Cybermen would be on them quickly.

"I don't know. I'm tempted to find just the one Cyberman and fire a coin in their chest unit to find out. But on the other hand… I don't want to get into a fight with one. This lot may look clunky, but they're strong and fast, and they can kill us both before we can get close. Come on, we're almost there."

"Are we really going to go through with this?" Quatermass grabbed her arm.

The Doctor turned to face him grimly. "We might not have a choice. They don't have an armoury on this ship; they don't need one. Their weapons are issued to them all, so there's no need for one on this ship. And if we attack a Cyberman out here, we wouldn't be able to hide the body for long. And I don't want to do that unless I have to."

Even as she said that the Doctor had to admit she hadn't heard or seen any signs the Cybermen on the ship had even found the one she had dealt with in the cells. She had thought, since the crew of the ship was small and there were a small number of Cybermen on the ship, he'd have been missed.

_And yet, it is possible that he __**has **__been missed, but the Cybermen are keeping quiet for some reason. Then again, do these Cybermen even have the distress-call systems I've encountered over the years? _

Quatermass had to concede the Doctor had a point there. "So we're going to take a risk?"

"It's reckless, I know," the Doctor replied grimly. "But you have to keep in mind, the main branches of the Cyber Race are all connected and related; they all come from Mondas. The Cyberleader admitted it, but I'm starting to think that a lot of what he said wasn't the truth. I think the Cybermen of Mondas had been spreading for a while, or at least inspiring other races subtly to become like them. If I am right, then the Cybermen's main branches share the same weakness."

"But it's only a theory."

"I know," the Doctor replied, annoyed Quatermass was making this only more tricky. "But theories need to be proven."

"Good point."

As they came to the part of the ship where the control room was located, the Doctor and Professor Quatermass came across a Cyberman marching through the corridors. The Doctor closed her eyes, reached a decision and she readied the catapult with a gold doubloon. She stepped out of hiding, throwing off Quatermass' attempts at pulling her back, and shot the gold coin straight into the chest unit.

The result was dramatic and fiery.

The Cyberman, completely taken by surprise by the Doctor stepping out in front of it, was unprepared for the unexpected attack, and so before it had time to defend itself, the coin impacted on the chest unit and ripped into the circuitry underneath. The chest unit exploded, and the Cyberman let out a terrible mechanical scream.

The Doctor jumped back in surprise when she heard the scream. She hadn't expected to hear the scream be so loud, but she watched as the Cyberman collapsed to the ground with a crash. She hadn't expected the reaction to the golden doubloon to be so dramatic. She watched as Professor Quatermass appeared at her shoulder out of the corner of her eye, looking down at the body with shock and horror.

"So that's what gold does to one of them?" Quatermass whispered.

"Yes. It does that to many branches of the Cybermen. But I never expected that," she added with regret.

It was strange. She had always hated the Cybermen, loathed them more than she loathed the Daleks because there was just _something _about their cold, emotionless minds, so committed to survival and conquest because they truly didn't see any other way, and yet deep down she knew they had mutilated themselves because they had thought it was the only way to go.

In the Doctor's mind, the fewer Cybermen there were, the better. She wasn't denying that every race in the universe was unique and special and deserved to survive, but she could not deny the Cybermen destroyed everything around them. But when she had heard that scream, completely different to what she had heard in the past, she had felt something she hadn't expected only she didn't know if it was guilt.

_Is this my new feminine side coming out to play? _

"Come on," the Doctor said after she bent down to pick up a weapon, one she knew would work but privately she picked it up because she truly didn't want to hear the scream again. As she walked to the control room, the Doctor glanced at Quatermass and hoped he didn't think of her as a monster for what she had just done, but she turned her head to face forwards again so she wouldn't have to know.

* * *

Bernard Quatermass was glad to be inside the control room of the Cybermen's ship, although he was surprised the room was empty though he guessed the rest of the crew were so busy with other tasks they didn't have the numbers to post guards. At the same time, he looked worriedly at the Doctor. He had noticed the look of shock and horror at what she had been forced to do, and the nervous looks she was sending him in turn as if she expected him to judge her for what she had done.

"I think I've got it," the Doctor said, looking at the controls to the display she was examining.

"What have you found?"

"The Cybermen plan to jettison a satellite in orbit shortly after they lift off," the Doctor replied, studying the screen grimly and her eyes narrowed even more as she continued to read what was there. "Once they leave, the satellite will continue to broadcast a number of signals into the Earth's atmosphere. The signals will be beamed into the radio waves bouncing around already, lacing them with subliminal messages while they maintain control over the humans they plan to mind control."

Quatermass shuddered at the thought of being placed under the control of an alien race who wanted them to simply transform the human race into emotionless machines like them. "I suppose it makes sense they'd use a satellite," he commented. "In space, we wouldn't have much of a hope of finding it."

"True enough."

"What are the Cybermen doing now?"

"Well, we've got time," the Doctor was still reading the screens in front of her. "They're still busy with their ships' repairs, but they are already putting their ship's computer onto the best way to construct the satellite; they're also thinking of creating a ring of satellites around the planet to boost the signal and make it stronger, but fortunately they're a long way off from doing it."

"That's a relief," Quatermass wondered just how long it would take before the Cybermen were ready to get that far given how they were stronger and were machine-driven compared to humans.

"Maybe, but we won't have long. The engines of the ship weren't that badly damaged, so the Cybermen won't need long before the ship is back up to capacity."

"What do we do?" Quatermass asked, wondering just how more out of depth he could get, but next to all of this technology he didn't know what he could do.

"The Cybermen have placed a mind-control signal into their ship," the Doctor replied, "but the Cybermen are regulating the signals themselves."

Quatermass caught the grim expression on the Doctor's face and realised what she had in mind. "You mean…?"

"I have to destroy them," the Doctor whispered looking up at him. "Why am I being given these choices after I've just killed that one-?"

"Doctor, the Cybermen want to turn all of _us _into things like them," Quatermass looked fiercely into her eyes. "We've no choice."

The Doctor looked into his eyes and he could see that the death of the Cyberman outside had really shaken her. "There's always a choice, Professor," she whispered.

"What's the matter?" Quatermass asked insistently, knowing there was more to it than some kind of moral stance.

"I don't know," the Doctor replied thoughtfully. "I've…been there when Cybermen were destroyed, but I've never cared. I don't know if its something off with my regeneration, or if it's my new gender coming out, but something about that scream worried me. But you're right, they must be stopped."

The Doctor's hands moved rapidly over the relevant controls. "There. That should do it," she said in a neutral voice.

"What did you do?"

"Set up an overload. It will blow out the power transmitter and the Cybermen will be destroyed. The Cybermen are certainly receiving power beamed to them from this ship, so I just simply shut it down by overloading the power grid," the Doctor's voice became increasingly bleak while over some kind of intercom they overheard the sounds of Cybermen voices rising and falling as they were clearly dying.

Quatermass flinched at the sinister sound but he looked into the Doctor's face and saw the look on the Time Lady's face. The guilt was there, and she flinched every time she heard the Cybermen scream as they died, but there was a resolve that hadn't been there before. The Doctor seemed to have regretted what she had done, but she was happy the crisis was over.


	10. Chapter 10 Offer

Disclaimer - I don't own either Doctor Who nor Quatermass.

Feedback would be lovely.

Only one more chapter to go.

* * *

Wrong Time and Rockets.

Professor Quatermass growled under his breath as he watched as the soldiers, commanded by a colonel who outranked Major Pike who had been freed under the influence of the Cybermen, supervised the salvage of the Cybermen's ship. There were a number of cranes nearby which were working in preparation to lift the Cyber-ship up and take it away so where else.

Quatermass had no idea how the military planned to do it; the Cyber-ship was enormous, easily larger than one of the latest passenger aircraft, and Quatermass wondered how they were going to move it, but he decided he didn't really care.

In the meantime, Quatermass and the other scientists and engineers who worked for the British Rocket Group were watching from the sidelines. The colonel had told them to leave several times before, but after a while, the officer had left them alone so he could supervise the removal of the Cybermen.

The soldiers were going around, working in teams to lift up the bodies of the Cybermen and place the bodies on trucks while the engineers working on the cranes were trying to come up with a workable solution of removing the Cyber-ship. Quatermass wished them luck; when he had seen the Cybermen's ship, he hadn't really given much thought at all about how he and his team were going to get the ship out of here and back to the Rocket Group's base where they could examine it at their leisure.

But as he looked at the cranes the soldiers had already brought in, Quatermass could not help but wonder if they were even up to the challenge, but then he decided they'd find a way even though he looked on with a heavy heart. The Cyber-ship contained a wealth of scientific knowledge and technology. The ship had the means of travelling to _the planets in the solar system, _it also had a _faster than light drive _which meant it could travel beyond the moon, and into interstellar space.

It would be wasted on the military.

As he watched them packing the Cybermen's corpses, Professor Quatermass wondered just what they would do with the bodies. Major Pike and the rest of his men might have had their brains placed under the control of the Cybermen, though in truth Quatermass had never given it much thought when he and everyone else had learnt the Cybermen had taken control of them, somehow it made some degree of sense they would have a sliver of conscious thought under all that mental control.

Anyway, Pike had been describing the incident to the colonel. Quatermass was hardly surprised when he overheard their conversation; he didn't need to hear the colonel actually speak to know the other man was sceptical although the proof was lying everywhere, and even a close-minded fool like the colonel could see that there was a difference between a fake alien spacecraft and a real one.

Quatermass had spoken to the colonel, and had been interrogated by him four times before the colonel, not seeing any sign of his _wonderful theories _that this whole thing was a fake, caused by a foreign power although the corpses of the Cybermen, their energy weapons, and their advanced technology had worked to change his mind.

It also helped when the Doctor, who had also been interrogated a few times by the colonel although he had done so without Pike, who knew that the Doctor was not human, being close by, had become so tired by the colonels constant disinterest, she had gone over to one of the nearest Cybermen and using an alien tool and opened up the 'mask' of the corpse, and revealed the decomposing face underneath. The smell alone had been strong enough to shut the colonel up, especially since there was no way it could be faked, but Quatermass had seen the colonel's mouth moved silently as he tried to think of something that could explain it, but he hadn't said a word.

Strangely Pike had not said anything about the Doctor's alien nature, though he was unsure why that was given how Pike had told his story a dozen times.

Quatermass had seen and met dozens of close-minded militaristic buffoons in his time, and it was one of the reasons why Quatermass had gone out of his way to ensure his projects were kept as far from the military as they could be even though the reality was he could only do so much before they interfered.

"They're still here, then?" Quatermass turned and saw Richard standing behind him.

"They are. It will probably take them hours to find a way to get this thing away safely," Quatermass replied with a gleeful smile at the thought of the army being slowed down, though he knew it would have taken him and the other engineers just as long to do the same though the military would have more resources and contacts to draw upon that the British Rocket Group.

Richard chuckled with amusement though his expression became more solemn as he looked up at the Cybership. "I was really looking forward to being part of the team where we'd learn what makes this thing tick, weren't you?" he asked rhetorically.

"Yes," Quatermass nodded solemnly, glancing up at the ship, as he tried to imagine the kind of years of work and research which would have culminated in the design of a faster than light ship which would travel across the galaxy.

_Faster than light…._

_INTERSTELLAR….!_

It turned Quatermass' stomach that he had come so close to getting hold of an actual alien spacecraft which was probably the result of hundreds of years of research, probably just as many as the research which the Cybermen's forebears had used to study cybernetic and prosthetic technology and taking it to such extremes their very _brains _were adjusted so they wouldn't hear themselves screaming with what they were doing to themselves, and thought nothing about carrying out the same sick conversion on dozens of other races and forcing them to become like them only in those alien races' images, and now he was going to have to see the same alien ship be carted off somewhere where he would never find it again.

_How many years went into you? _Quatermass asked as he studied the alien ship which was still sitting in the churned up and scorched ground which had been burnt and shoved to the side as the ship had come to a rest. _How many years did it take before you came along? Did the Mondasian people experiment with rockets like us? How long did it take before they came up with an efficient means of lift-off which meant you didn't need to use rockets? Or do you use rockets, only of a different variety to what we have here? _

Those questions had rushed through Quatermass's mind before, back when he had first seen the ship. Granted, the incident with the Cybermen had almost gotten them either all killed or taken over, but now the Cybermen had been dealt with by the Doctor, Quatermass had honestly hoped to get down to really hard scientific discovery. At least until the military had come along and were now planning on taking it away.

_I wonder what they're going to do with the technology, _Quatermass thought to himself as he observed the soldiers moving around, _are they going to use the Cybership in the same way they have wanted to use my rockets? _

He had to admit it was a logical step; if they couldn't get hold of his rockets, then why not use the advanced technology of the Cybership?

Snell watched him sympathetically, seeing the pain that was as clear as day on Quatermass's face; he too had wanted to study the alien technology of the Cybership. The ship had the answers to so many of the problems they had to space technology at the moment.

Things like hull design were one thing, but the interstellar warp drive… With the Cybership in the Rocket Group labs, they could have leapfrogged ahead maybe a century or two, but in truth, Snell wasn't particularly surprised the military were taking it from them.

They had wanted what they deemed an ultimate weapon for a long time ever since the war, but what they would do with the warp engine of the Cybership, he had no idea. He just hoped that they could find a way of getting to it.

"I'm more worried about what they're going to do with the Cybermen," Snell put his cards on the table with something that had been worrying him ever since he had seen the soldiers lifting out the corpses of the Cybermen and placing them on a truck.

Quatermass didn't need to do anything more than nod. He'd seen what the soldiers were doing as well, and it worried-no, it terrified him. Bernard remembered only too well the number of times both elements of the government and the military who wanted him to dedicating his research of rockets into a more militaristic leaning, and he knew how greedy those people were with the ideas of creating a new generation of weapons research.

At the same time, he remembered the Doctor's story about the Cybermen, how they had started out, and how they had manipulated other races into developing cybernetic technology and then integrating it into themselves until there was nothing left.

Greedy politicians and soldiers who wanted more than what they had already and cybernetic technology was not a good combination.

Bernard could see the benefits behind the technology, of course; the Doctor's descriptions had been graphic enough, but the idea of someone who was injured so badly their good old fashioned limbs were worthless having them replaced with artificial counterparts was sound enough. Quatermass could even picture cybernetic technology being used for good things. In any case, at this point in time, there were dozens of people living with some limbs lost after the war. Arms, legs, the list went on.

Unfortunately, when the story of what had happened here reached certain ears, it would be classified and buried, but not forgotten. Bernard was alright with that; he had been the victim of that type of government red tape before, and it no longer bothered him although he did get frustrated because everyone seemed content to live with their heads in the sand.

What worried him the most was when the story was heard and the scientists who would study the technology of the Cybermen would take their research so far some people would demand an army of cyborgs. It would start with arms and legs, but it would go on and on until they repeated the mistakes the Cybermen had made.

He could see it now.

He could see the scientists and engineers studying the technology, making experiments before they began experiments either on animals or on people and seeing where it would all go. Once they had the information, they would begun creating an army of soldiers who had been cybernetically enhanced and at some point, they would begin installing the soldiers into armour and then integrating them in without thinking about what they were doing.

Quatermass did ask himself when it would be before they realised they would need to shut off the emotions. Although he didn't know for certain, he had the impression the Cybermen had done it fairly quickly when they had reached a certain point in their research and development, because it was clear what they were doing to themselves seemed to be doing more harm than good.

"They still haven't moved it yet?"

Quatermass swung around. "Doctor? Where have you been?"

After she had spoken to the colonel, although the conversation had been antagonistic since the colonel had been incredibly narrow-minded, the Doctor had seemed to have vanished and no-one had any ideas of where she was.

"Inside the Cybership," the Doctor's voice was solemn. "I wanted to make sure some bits and pieces weren't taken out and misused; I don't have any problems with some of the ship being studied, but a lot of that ship is beyond what you've got already."

"What about the faster than light drive?" Quatermass's mouth felt dry as he suddenly had a vision of the Doctor deliberately sabotaging the ship so no-one could study it. He recalled what she had said about time travel and the Time Lord's role in keeping history on track.

"I've left it alone," the Doctor's reply surprised them both. "The drive, at least. But I have removed the components for the fusion plant. The human race is simply not ready for fusion power just yet; you've only had fission for a few years, and you need time to develop before you get to that level."

Quatermass nodded, relieved the faster than light drive was intact.

Richard looked at the Doctor curiously. "What else were you doing inside the ship, Doctor?"

"I think we should leave," the Doctor surprised them both.

"What do you mean, leave? Just leave all this behind?" Quatermass waved a hand at the ship and the soldiers.

"Yes," the Doctor replied, shifting on her feet, and for the first time Quatermass and Snell both noticed the Time Lady's baggy old frock coat was baggier than normal, and she seemed to have wrapped her arms around a part of it.

"Have you taken…something out of that ship?" Snell whispered.

The Doctor turned to him, and a small half-smile crossed her face which answered Richard's question for the two scientists but she refused to say anything else. "I think we should leave," she repeated.

"But won't the soldiers stop us?"

"No, they've been trying to force us to leave for the last couple of hours. We've only been here to see what they're doing, but if they had enough soldiers they would have forced us to move on by now," the Doctor replied. "In any case, if we stay here too long the colonel might get ideas about us, and we don't want to be here too long if it comes to that."

The two scientists knew the Time Lady had a point. When the colonel had arrived, he had immediately demanded they leave, but he had been sidetracked from ensuring his orders were carried out and she was right, there were more soldiers running around picking up the bodies of the Cybermen rather than forcing the scientists of the BRG to leave.

But the Doctor's last statement made Quatermass wonder if the military knew about the Doctor beyond anything they might have learnt tonight, but he knew he couldn't prove it…

* * *

The Doctor was relieved when she was in the back of the car, anything to get away from the site where the Cybermen's ship had crashed on the Earth as she shifted in her seat and tried to get comfortable. As she shifted under the weight of what she had taken from the Cybership, the Doctor was just thankful it was all over.

While the battle with the Cybermen had been on a much smaller scale much like the battle she'd had with them on Telos and on the Wheel although it had had the potential to become just as bad as the one where she had first teamed up with UNIT, the Doctor was just thankful she had managed to straighten herself out just in time to deal with the Cybermen before they had carried out their plans.

Thinking about their plans made the Doctor shudder. She had known for a long time the Mondasian Cybermen had used the same subtle tactics on different worlds, and occasionally landed their forces near a world with a human culture on it where they could begin work on converting the population and then leaving when they had finished and the conversion of the society was underway, but she had never actually discovered it before their seed took root.

And at the same time, the Doctor was starting to experience a situation outside of her knowledge and control before now; staying in one place longer than she normally did.

Alright, admittedly, in the past, she would have left in the TARDIS by now and gone on her merry way before anyone thought of asking her too many questions although she had kept on the move because her prior two incarnations had known that the interference in the timelines when she and her companions had arrived to deal with the immediate problems, some of which turned out to be relatively straightforward for her to deal with, would attract attention from the Time Lords, but in her current predicament she no longer had to worry much about that.

It was just so bizarre; she had known she was now trapped on Earth, but it wasn't until the Cybermen had been defeated and she was here longer than she would normally be, the Doctor didn't know how to feel. After spending so long on the move, always leaving under the guise of not wanting anyone to ask any irritating and exhausting questions which no-one had thought to really ask because everything had been all go before the situations had ended though at the end they would turn and ask them.

The reality was very different. Every time the TARDIS landed on a planet and as long as her prior two selves and the different entourages of companions they'd picked up over the years, the timeline would be unchanged, but each time the doors were opened and they left and dealt with the situation on hand, the Time Lords would detect the change; ordinarily they wouldn't be too concerned with some changes in the timeline, especially since it led to a better outcome in the long run, but the Doctor had known from the moment she had stepped into the TARDIS when she had left Gallifrey originally with Susan if she stayed in one place too long and they started altering events, the Time Lords would find them and punish them for being renegades.

_But now?_

She might be exiled, but she was still so new to this new body, so new to this new existence it was outside of her immediate experience; it would take time for her to get used to the fact she was now in a place where her people had her where they wanted, and she could intervene in problems whereas in the past she had needed to keep on the move as soon as the problems had been dealt with, though what it would mean for her later, she had no idea.

The Doctor looked out of the window and watched as the driver spoke to one of the few soldiers on sentry duty and she went very still so she wouldn't attract any attention which would make the soldier focus on her coat. She didn't pay any attention to their conversation - she doubted they would be here long given how the soldiers had wanted them to leave ages ago, but that didn't mean the soldiers wouldn't suddenly keep them here if one of them saw something suspicious - so she looked out of the windows, and immediately wished she hadn't when she saw something that made her feel both worried and reassured.

The soldiers were taking the corpses of the Cybermen and were placing them onto trucks. The Doctor was in two minds about it; on the one hand she was just relieved she had foreseen this when she had overloaded their power relays, pouring so much energy into their bodies it incinerated their internal cybernetics, so in the long run their bodies wouldn't provide them with enough clues about how cybernetic technology worked. Still, it had been a near thing, and she had to be thankful her post-regeneration recovery had come this far, otherwise she wouldn't have thought through her actions.

It also helped her mind had still been thinking about the Cybermen's plan in the first place, which was a bonus; it wouldn't have been a good idea to simply let the Cybermen come about because although she had managed to stop them, the Cybermen came about anyway because she had accidentally let a bunch of stupid soldiers take the Cybermen away, only for them to repeat Mondas's mistakes.

The Doctor was jerked - literally - out of her thoughts when the car went off, and she had to wince at the sound of the engine. _Honestly, _she thought, _why do humans have to rely on this type of energy when its fuel is so finite? _

"So what did you take from the Cybership, Doctor?"

The Doctor turned and smiled at Quatermass as she pulled back her coat and held up the piece of Cyber technology she had stolen from the ship. Quatermass and Snell leaned forward to take a look. The device the Doctor had stolen was a large black cylinder with two red tops at either end with a large, thick detachable cable at one end.

"What is it?" Quatermass whispered.

"This, Professor Quatermass," the Doctor said for dramatic effect with the small, smug smile on her face showing how pleased she was, "is a part of the magnetic repulsion thruster of the Cybership."

_Magnetic repulsion thruster…_

Quatermass lifted his head and stared at the Time Lady curiously. "Does it do what I think it does?" he asked, thankful the Time Lady had just given him some of the clues in the name of the device.

"If you think the thruster can do what your rockets can do without liquid chemical fuels, then yes," the Doctor smiled. "Lifting off of the ground of a planet and heading into space is straightforward enough; you can do it with rockets, either with chemical fuels or fusion power. But the most common and energy-efficient method is to simply repel the gravity of the planet, and once the ship has passed out of the gravity well, the main engines can be engaged."

"And you're giving it to us, why?" Snell asked.

"Why do you ask me that?"

"Well," Snell began uncertainly, "all that talk about time travel before this mess, about how your people don't want history to be changed-."

"Oh, that," the Doctor interrupted with a smile while she placed the thruster on the seat next to her, "my people don't have a problem with people changing small bits of the timeline; it's only when someone changes it in such a way that its heavily damaged they will get involved. And besides, it will take ages for you to learn how this thruster works; you just don't currently have the technology to duplicate the thruster though it will give you a nice headstart, so the timeline will unfold as it should. If you let me help."

"What do you mean by that?" Quatermass asked, surprised by what the Doctor had just said.

The Doctor sighed and looked down at her hands. These new dainty hands which were brand new to her, just like the rest of her third incarnation. "I've been exiled to Earth," she said, "I have no-where else to go. Don't forget, I am an alien with centuries of knowledge and experience under my belt; I can help you develop your rocket and space technology and help you learn how the thruster works, so then when you're ready you can send out rockets further into space."

Quatermass and Snell looked at one another, both of them surprised by the unexpected offer. At the same time, they had to admit to themselves they should have seen this coming once they had learnt of the Doctor's exile, though it hadn't because the Cybermen had taken priority.

"Why would you want to help us?" Bernard asked, looking at the Time Lady uncertainly.

The Doctor wasn't surprised by the question. In truth, her idea about helping the British Rocket Group had only just occurred to her once she had gotten used to the fact she was now exiled to Earth. "I like you," the Doctor replied. "You've had experience with aliens before this mess with the Cybermen, and you're both open-minded scientists. And besides, wouldn't you want to take advantage of my knowledge of space travel? Human technology may not be advanced yet to go beyond the moon, but that doesn't mean you cannot ignore what I can help you with. In a few years time," she went on, taking a deep breath as she reached a decision, "the Americans will launch the first spacecraft to land on the moon. What if after that a rocket is launched, piloted by machines to study the outer planets of the solar system? I can help you with that; and as long as the timeline is kept more or less in line, the Time Lords won't get involved."

Bernard Quatermass wondered what it said about him that he was actually considering the idea that was blossoming in his mind.

While he didn't really know the Doctor all that well, he had grown to trust the Time Lady, especially after seeing her deal with the Cybermen, although he was concerned about why she hadn't really taken action against the soldiers for taking the corpses away, though he did plan to ask her.

But her offer was fascinating.

It was intriguing and it was tempting, he couldn't deny that.

While he knew eventually the Rocket Group and other organisations like it would eventually develop space travel, it was compelling for him to let the Doctor stay and give them help, even if he would prefer to discover the answers for himself. At the same time, he had an actual alien, someone who didn't have any hostile intentions towards them. Knowing that the Doctor came from a species thousands of millennia older than the human race was also of interest to him since she probably knew secrets about space travel Quatermass had never even thought about.

"It's not that we don't want you to give us help, Doctor," Bernard said, and he paused when he saw the Time Lady's face become downcast, "but I've always been looking forward to discovering scientific truth by myself."

The Doctor winced at the reply.

Quatermass suddenly felt guilty as he took in her reaction, and he admitted to himself that one of the biggest problems he had was he didn't have a clear idea of the Doctor's motivations for wanting to join the group.

"But on the other hand, I wouldn't mind having someone nearby to give us advice into how space travel worked, and your idea of a spacecraft being launched which can be used to explore the solar system is compelling," Quatermass added, his mind already considering the design of the ship in question though he knew it would take years before he could get the funding and the means of building it. He also thought about what else the Doctor could provide the Rocket Group. And then it occurred to him what the Doctor might want in return, and he wanted to find out if his hunch was right.

"What do you want in return?"

"Facilities to repair the TARDIS; just because my memory of how the ship works doesn't mean all of it is gone, and at the same time I might let a few of your scientists even study my ship," the Doctor said.

Quatermass shared a look with Richard and he had to admit it was more compelling. The idea of studying alien technology was fascinating; they might have lost their chance with the Cybermen's ship, but with the TARDIS who knew what they could learn.

They didn't know that the Doctor had no intention of letting them discover too much about the time ship.


	11. Chapter 11 Doctor Joanna Smith

Disclaimer - I don't own Doctor Who or Quatermass; they belong to their owners. I don't make any money off of them.

Feedback would be nice.

A/N - I had wanted the final chapter uploaded in October since it frees up my time during the Christmas run-up.

* * *

Wrong time and Rockets.

_The thing about my last regeneration was I'd had the option into making sure a nice little but very stable paradox took place so I didn't need to choose my usual clothes, _the Doctor thought to herself as she rooted through the TARDIS wardrobe while Professor Quatermass and the other scientists of the British Rocket Group were waiting in the console room; at first she had questioned the wisdom of letting them into the TARDIS, some of those old rules of the Time Lords colouring her mind, but she knew it was important if she wanted help in repairing her ship and hopefully making sense of how everything worked (she wouldn't ever admit something like that on any level, except to herself) if she wanted the Group to trust her.

In the meantime, while they were in the console room she would have enough time to find some clothes that would suit her new incarnation. Her previous self had never really cared about clothes, being content with what he had worn for ages, but for her new self they were more important, and so she was spending more time in the female section of the wardrobe (something that would take her longer to accept, but give her time and she'd get used to the notion she was a woman; she had been in this body for a few hours already, but there would undoubtably be moments like this), and trying to choose something to wear which kept in line with this point in human history.

As she looked through the wardrobe (she was tempted to throw on a pair of capri pants, though she was certain they wouldn't be appropriate if she was going to be working for the Rocket Group), the Doctor thought about everything now the crisis with the Cybermen was over and she was more recovered from her regeneration though she would probably be feeling the aftereffects for some time to come until she was fully recovered.

Her new gender aside, the thoughts of her new exile was still something that was going to take time for her to properly accept. She had walked into the TARDIS console room and had prepared to take off the moment she had walked in, hoping to put distance between herself and this point in time in Earth's history to put the Time Lords off of the scent before she had noticed the inhibitor on the console. She had thought about the matter in the car, but while she had accepted the fact she was in a new body which was now exiled to Earth, she could safely say she had acted on instinct after being on the run for a century.

The Doctor smiled as she found a pair of denim jeans, but as she slipped them on to see if they would fit her she found them to be a little tight but as she'd looked into the mirror that was nearby, she had to admit they looked good, though from what she knew of the fabric she could see the denim would not be suitable if she wanted to go running. After slipping them off and putting them back, she resumed her search, relieved that she was going to get out of her second incarnation's crumpled clothes.

She turned her mind to the Cybermen and their ship; she wasn't worried about the bodies of the Cybermen being experimented on since the power surge she'd poured into their bodies destroyed their inner workings, and if they did find anything useable it was doubtful they would make anything out of it. In case she was wrong, then she would keep her eyes and ears open.

There was little she could do about the ship; with the few resources she had already, there was no way she could get the ship away from them, and with UNIT not around for another few years after that mess with the Great Intelligence, she didn't have the connections to getting the ship away from them in the first place. The only consolation was it would take decades to just study the ship and scratch away enough of the surface in order to get an idea of how the underlying technology worked.

In the case of the warp engine, it would probably take a century unless they managed to get to grips with how the more advanced computer technology worked in order to get an idea of the _principles _of how the warp engine worked, but the Doctor wasn't worried; all the science fiction TV shows and movies, and the actual scientific work which went into devising a way of travelling faster than the speed of light by warping space would not be coming out for a very long time, so even if the soldiers took the Cybership to a research facility for study, it would take years for them to reach the level they would need to properly understand the warp engine.

The Doctor decided to focus on the Cybership later if she needed to, although she was disappointed she couldn't examine it and find out if it had the technology to restore some of her TARDIS to working order, though she had another few ideas of how to bypass the inhibitor and get back out into the universe again. But she had to admit, while she had ideas on how to restore the TARDIS to working order, she would need to accept the possibility they wouldn't work, and she had to be realistic; the Time Lords who had presided over her trial had told her her knowledge of the TARDIS would be taken from her, but at the same time she wondered just how far that went. She only hoped her knowledge of dematerialisation theory and the dematerialisation codes had been blocked, and not all of her knowledge on TARDIS mechanics (alright, so she hadn't really paid any attention to her lessons; her first self had never really focused on the fact they would be a Time Lord in the future, and as a result didn't buckle down until much much later), but if they were then she would definitely need help.

The Doctor stopped when she found a pair of simple naval blue slacks (she'd forgotten what they were termed by modern fashion) but they looked and felt comfortable in her hands, and she slipped them on and walked up and down, but for now she ignored the skirts she could see hanging up nearby (she would experiment with them later, she decided to herself mentally, after she was more comfortable with her new incarnation, but for now she would just wear what came naturally to her.

_Hmm, these feel good, _she thought to herself as she walked around the wardrobe before she selected a nice pair of simple shoes before she reached out for a red blouse. When she was finished with them, she pulled out a smart looking jacket, also in naval blue. Once she was finished she went to the table where all the things left in her second self's pocket had been piled up. She grabbed her sonic screwdriver, her TARDIS key and a few other items, but the rest of the pile was left there. She would sort through them later, though she doubted much of it would be of any use to her given how much of the stuff her second self had collected was, looking back, junk. There had been a time where collecting it had once meant something to the Time Lady.

The Doctor fingered the 500-year Diary and she pushed it into her pocket knowing the diary would be valuable to her later, especially since her first incarnation had spent years noticing and noting down everything he'd seen on his travels with Susan.

The Doctor walked over to the mirror and studied her new appearance, and she smiled at the sight of what she was seeing. Navel blue slacks, red blouse, and naval blue jacket. Her shoes were just simple white shoes (alright, so she had thought about wearing something anachronistic given how…restrictive the shoe designs were for women in this time period, but she had found something easy to wear although she did plan on experimenting to see just how things felt; but some of those high-heeled shoes looked uncomfortable, really), and as she smiled at herself in the mirror she ran a hand through her long hair.

_I've never had long hair before, but I'll get used to it. In fact, I'll get used to ALL of it, _the Doctor thought to herself, refusing to put too much thought into what the current circumstances were. She still didn't know what the exile meant for her in the long term, but she hoped the ideas she had for dealing with the inhibitor went through.

The Doctor pulled herself away from the mirror and walked through the wardrobe doors and back into the console room. She had used the architectural reconfiguration system to move the wardrobe and the console room together so she wouldn't have to walk too far to change her clothes. As she walked in through the door, she smiled when she saw the scientists of the British Rocket Group clustered around the console, or looking around the room with fascination. She wasn't worried about them trying to take anything given she had programmed the TARDIS security systems to make sure anything taken was brought back.

"How is all this possible?" one scientist said when she stepped in through the door.

"The inside of the TARDIS is a fourth dimension; space is expanded to accommodate time," the Doctor said. "The time itself is pumped into the TARDIS from the Time Vortex and it's used to expand the space inside according to a mathematical model set down like the foundations being laid in a house. It's a complicated form of temporal engineering, but it works."

The Doctor looked around the console at the other faces in the room and then she turned to Professor Quatermass. "Have you told them?"

"Yes," Bernard smiled.

The Doctor smiled back and looked at the others somewhat shyly; she had worked well with UNIT especially given the crisis aided by Tobias Vaughn, but these people were scientists and she didn't know how they'd cope with an actual alien around. "How do you feel about that?" she asked them.

The scientist Angus smiled at her soothingly. "I personally think it's amazing. An alien from another planet here to help us," he said.

"Yes," another scientist smiled in agreement, looking excited.

The Doctor could see the excitement on his face and recognised it at once for what it was. These people were hoping she would teach them a great deal about space travel, but she was also hoping they weren't hoping she'd teach them anything about time travel; she knew it would annoy the Time Lords, but while the idea had appeal, she didn't want to make things worse for her because she had just wanted some petty revenge.

"Doctor, these Cybermen - will they try again?" another scientist asked (the Doctor swore to herself to find out what she could about the various names for the scientists and engineers who worked for the British Rocket Group, but there was still time for that, given she could be here for a long time) curiously with some apprehension.

"Yes," the Doctor nodded.

She wasn't sure if it was against the Laws of Time or not to give away such information, but she needed these scientists to be aware of the threat.

"The Cybermen are devoted to surviving at all cost, and they don't care about anything else but survival. It's all they're interested in, and at this point there are only a few groups. Their planet is drifting through space, but they are already manipulating other races into becoming like them. On top of that, when Mondas is destroyed, other groups will have evolved on different worlds as well."

"And they will still come back here?" someone whispered.

The Doctor nodded. "Oh yes," she said quietly. "Many of the Cybermen's conversion techniques are primitive surgical butchery operations. They rely on familiar anatomy; so in this case, Cybermen created from human stock will likewise go for human stock."

"Did they really evolve on other worlds?"

"Yes. It's called parallel evolution. It's a process where separate groups of people occupied different but similar environments. The Cybermen of Mondas may have started seeding other worlds, but there are other groups out there who were inspired by the Cybermen, or they started out simply because they were trying to survive, or they were fighting a long war and they needed to find a way they could survive," the Doctor answered.

"Yes, speaking of the Cybermen, aren't you at all worried the military will be dissecting them and finding out how they work?" Quatermass asked.

"You mean they might accidentally send the human race down the same path as the Cybermen?" the Doctor asked, sounding like she had expected the question at some point.

Quatermass nodded. "Yes."

"No. I overloaded the power relay of the Cybermen," the Doctor's expression became more grim and solemn as she recalled what she had done to the Cybermen even if it was the only way to properly be rid of them since their resources were so scarce. "I channelled a lot of the spacecraft's energy into their power relays, which in turn incinerated their inner workings. The army might get something out of their research, but not a lot."

"Are you sure?" Richard asked sceptically.

"Yes!" the Doctor replied in exasperation, though she sighed as she met their expressions. "Alright, maybe a few of their components will have survived, but I promise you I will keep my eyes and ears open at all times."

"How much can you actually help us with, Doctor?" a scientist who was busy examining the bank of computers at the far end of the console room asked absently, though the Doctor was thankful for the change in topic.

Delighted by the change in topic, the Doctor thought rapidly about what she could help the scientists here with. "Well, for a start I can help you understand build up on the electromagnetic thruster I took from the Cybership. I can also help you with other spacecraft propulsion techniques."

"Can you help us travel beyond the moon?"

The Doctor hesitated. Again, she would love nothing more than to aggravate the Time Lords for what they had done to her, but she felt it wasn't a good move on her part no matter how appealing it was. "Best not," she replied, ignoring their looks and sounds of disappointment with ease because she'd expected it, really. "You've still got a long way to go until your technology catches up with any physics I tell you about. It's best if you discover the secrets of interstellar travel on your own. And besides, I don't want my exile to be made even longer without any hope of leaving Earth."

The scientists' reactions were mixed when they heard that, and one of them asked, "Can you tell us more about time travel?"

"I don't know. I can give you some knowledge about temporal theory, which might help with the design of your rockets and make them more efficient, but I'm not sure yet if I can personally build a time machine on my own at this point; my people have blocked my mind on subjects relating to time travel, and I don't know how extensive the block is."

"But I can help you," the Doctor went on, a thoughtful smile on her face as she thought of the best ways she could be of some service. "The electromagnetic thruster is just one example; I can help you reverse-engineer the technology although it will take time though I can help you devise space probes that can travel on rockets at first, and then travel through space without the need for rocket propulsion since there are other methods."

"Like what?" someone leaned forward interested.

"Solar sail propulsion, for instance; you deploy a sail made out of a special foil, and the light rays from the sun will propel the craft through space," the Doctor explained.

"Sails?" Angus whispered, turning to grin at Quatermass. "Sounds rather like the yachts there are today."

"Different, yes, but the principle is identical," the Doctor agreed with a smile. "I've already got the idea in mind together we work on a space probe which can travel out into space, and take pictures which can be transmitted back to Earth."

"That would take forever."

"Not quite," the Doctor's smile grew, knowing that it was possible but it would take some time before she got over her new and current resources enough to see what she could provide and what she couldn't. "Let me have some time, and I am positive I can give you something that could do that."

"What other things do you think you can help us with, Doctor?"

The Doctor was starting to become frustrated by the questions. "How about we just see what I can do with what I've got?" she asked shortly.

"But why can't you help us by helping us build a ship capable of travelling faster than the speed of light?" the scientist who'd asked the question about what the Doctor could help the Rocket Group with persisted.

"Jack," Professor Quatermass began, but another scientist spoke over him.

"No, Bernard. Jack has a point. Why can't she help us travel beyond the moon?" he asked, looking around the faces inside the console room for more support. "I mean, she has this incredible machine, and although she says she's been exiled here, she has the means to give us more advanced technology."

"You're right. I do," the Doctor was tired of everyone speaking about her as if she wasn't even there, and she levelled a glare at the scientist who'd spoken (she wasn't sure how this glare was appearing to the scientists, her previous self had never really glared at others unless it was to prove a point, or to show contempt for those who angered him, but she hoped her original incarnation was bleeding through for her right about now). "I can change small events, but I can't change everything. I can help you understand the principles of the Cybermen's thruster, I can even help you design space stations and satellites, but I cannot _help you with an interstellar drive. _Your science has not reached the point yet where you have the means of going faster than light."

"That's enough. The Doctor has explained to us why she cannot help us that far," Professor Quatermass stepped forward, staring down the scientists who wanted to plunder the Doctor's TARDIS of its technology.

"But-," the scientist tried to argue, but Quatermass shook his head.

"No. I've given it some thought, but even if we'd had access to the Cybermen's ship we would never have really understood it unless we had years and years of time. I don't really understand the engine, and I doubt I ever would," Quatermass's voice was solemn as he looked around the console room, knowing each and every one of them wanted to build a spacecraft to travel beyond the moon, and now they had not only an alien who was willing to help but the ship that could have answered so many questions, some of which they didn't even know they might have had, on their minds but it was gone though the Doctor was still here to help, it wasn't surprising they would want to ask her more about the subject.

"But the good thing is the Doctor is here to stay, and she is going to help us with our work, and there will be plenty of opportunities for us to learn more about what she knows," Quatermass went on.

_Only so long as it doesn't go over the limit. _

Te Doctor had no problems with tinkering with the timeline now she had been exiled to Earth, but she knew there were lines which she could not cross, and giving the humans access to space travel, _interstellar _space travel, was one of them.

She had no problem with providing them with scientific knowledge as long as it didn't go into physics which wouldn't be discovered in another two centuries. She didn't care how they reacted to that, but she would do what it took to preserve the timeline although she didn't really know if it would make any difference.

The British Rocket Group may have been composed by a number of bright minds, but the Doctor knew they didn't yet have the means to develop a warp engine.

She knew her knowledge would change that although it would be challenging given how limited the technology of this point in Earth's history happened to be, the Doctor knew it wasn't going to happen either way.

The Doctor knew if she drastically changed history then the Time Lords would get involved; she hadn't the faintest_ idea _what they would do to her if she meddled in history to that extent, but she wasn't going to take things that far. They had exiled her here to Earth and she knew they had even worse punishments in their repertoire.

She just didn't know what they would do and that frightened her enough to keep her head down although she had no qualms about giving them aid with the basics. She knew her people didn't really care about anything small. When she had been travelling she had made sure that anything she had done was limited without causing too much damage to the timeline before she had gone on the move once more, never stopping while she tried to prevent the Time Lords from coming after her.

She might be exiled to Earth now, but the Doctor knew there were things she just could not do.

While she thought about things through, the Doctor realised she would need to be incredibly careful about how much these scientists learnt about her TARDIS. She just didn't like their attitudes and she was now wondering if it was even wise. She had made the suggestion because she had wanted to sweeten the deal between her and Professor Quatermass, but she had known from the moment she had made it she would need to be extremely careful but she could think that out later when she had time to herself.

"Doctor," Quatermass turned to look at her.

The Doctor looked enquiringly at him, wondering what he wanted now. "Yes?"

"I've just realised, we don't know your name."

_A name?_

The Doctor was about to open her mouth and say that he actually did know her name, it was the Doctor. But she stopped when she realised humans placed a value on names.

She couldn't tell them what she was really called. Time Lord names weren't too complicated enough for humans to understand, and besides, they didn't know there was power in a name.

Still, she knew she would need to have a name; the Time Lords had exiled her to Earth and she had no idea just how long this exile was going to last. For all she knew, she would be here for centuries, maybe millennia. The thought of being stranded on Earth for an entire life was bad enough, the thought maybe her next incarnation would be free, or maybe just as trapped as she was now. But she needed to have a name, something the humans could relate too.

Inspiration struck the Doctor as she thought about the types of names she had in her repertoire, and the best thing was it was close to a name she had used before.

"Doctor?"

It was Quatermass, and she lifted her head up when she realised she had been staring at the floor of the console room for the last few minutes in thought over what she could call herself.

The Doctor smiled at him. "Smith. Doctor Joanna Smith."


End file.
